


Mobius

by jessenigma



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Ending for season 1, Gen, No season 2 spoilers, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Season/Series 01, time travel is a confusing thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessenigma/pseuds/jessenigma
Summary: "No, we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. But I know who you are, Garcia Flynn. I know you’re busy, but we need to have a talk. I can help you with Rittenhouse, and I think you can help me too."(Or how an impossible journal came to be.)(No spoilers for season 2)





	1. Chapter 1

_"Lucy, is that –"  
_

_"The journal? Yeah. Flynn gave it to me at the meet after I gave him the information. He said he didn’t need it any more. But I asked him how he got it, and he said the weirdest thing. He said I_ _gave it to him."_

_"He said_ you _gave it to him? How could you have given it to him? Like what, you somehow slipped it into his pocket one night before he decided to go steal a time machine and take down an entire secret organization? I know you trusted him for that one trip, but are you really sure you want to listen to Flynn on this?"_

_"I have no idea how I could’ve given it to him or why he thinks I did. I asked him when he gave it to me and all he said was that I age surprisingly well."_

 

" _Yeah, nothing creepy about that at all. I’m with Wyatt, are you sure you want to listen to him?"_

_“I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. Maybe it’s a code. Or maybe someone was pretending to be me and passed something along. But the journal is impossible in the first place, so maybe it was me. A…future me.”_

_“It can’t be future you. You can’t go –“_

_“Back in my own timeline. I know. But maybe there’s something in here that explains. Maybe there’s all kinds of information in this journal.”_

_“Are you sure you want to read it?”_

_“No, I’m not sure. But it might be important that I do.”_

\--

 

The sky above the cemetery was a brilliant blue without a single cloud, and the air a crisp late winter chill. It was his wife’s favorite weather; almost apt for her funeral. For their daughter’s funeral. For the funeral of everything Flynn had ever held dear.

 

He was standing far from their graves, had only been just close enough to catch snatches of weeping from the friends and family gathered there after the mass. He hadn’t been in attendance. This was never how he wanted to say goodbye to his beautiful wife, his beloved daughter. Bad enough that they were both gone, that they had to die for his work when he did not, but to have _those people_ cover everything up. To have them lie and say that Flynn had killed his family. To force him to hide from his girls’ funerals so he could stay safe long enough to get his revenge.

 

To leave him with all this guilt in his heart.

 

“I’m so sorry to hear about Lorena and Iris, Mr. Flynn,” a voice said from behind him. Flynn started and turned, hand reflexively moving towards the gun stashed at his hip. A woman was standing a few feet away, dressed in mourning black coat and dress. She looked to be a few years older than him, pale with wavy dark hair that was flecked with silver strands. Her expression was serious, her mouth tight. And something about her clothes looked subtly wrong, as though perhaps they’d been picked hurriedly from an outdated closet. Odd.

 

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Flynn’s voice was strained, tension rising in him. Who was this woman? Was she –

 

“No, we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. But I know who you are, Garcia Flynn. I know you’re busy, but we need to have a talk. I can help you with Rittenhouse, and I think you can help me too.”

 

 

Half an hour later, he was accepting a room key at the front desk of some no-name motel with peeling wallpaper and dirty carpet. This whole situation seemed nothing short of insane. Here he was, on the run from several agencies and who knew how many secret organizations, and he was willing to just trust this woman who had appeared from nowhere with his family’s names on her lips? Let her bring him to this place where it would take days for anyone to even notice she’d killed him? She probably didn’t have a gun – he could tell enough about her to guess that – but only a fool would think she couldn’t hurt him any other way. But what else could Flynn do? She’d invoked the name that had haunted him since he’d given his information over to his NSA contact, since he’d come home and unknowingly set his own destruction into motion. And he absolutely needed to know what she knew.

 

The woman had been standing by the lobby exit peering anxiously out as Flynn had been settling the room. Looking for someone? As he approached, key in hand, she moved away from the door, looking up at him.

 

“Did you get the room? The one I said to ask for?”

 

Flynn dangled the key at her. One shabby ground floor motel room at the back of the building, next to the dumpsters. No view to speak of and no one to look in. No one to hear anything going horribly wrong either.

 

“I got it. Now, will you tell –“

 

“Not until we’re in the room,” she said shortly, cutting him off and taking the key from his hand. “I’m not risking anything until we’re there. You of all people should know that everything has ears now.” Gesturing sharply towards him, the woman led Flynn out of the motel lobby and around to the room, eyes darting around to take in their surroundings. Once there, she hesitated, checking the doorknob and lock. Finally, she opened it, ushering Flynn inside and bolting the door behind her. She checked the window locks, pulling the curtains tightly shut, and inspected the tiny bathroom’s shower. This was followed by the unplugging of the television set (it was surprisingly new, considering the state of the bedding on the two sorry-looking beds) and the phone line. At last, she turned and faced him as he sat on the side of a bed.

 

“My name is Lucy Preston. And what I’m going to say is going to sound completely ridiculous, but I need you to listen to me. As of right now, I’ve known you for fifteen years. And I’ve come from the future to help you get your wife and daughter back.”

 

This wasn’t ridiculous. This was outrageous. This woman – Lucy? – wasn’t going to give him any information he didn’t already have. She wasn’t even going to have the decency to kill him and let him join his family again. She was obviously just going to draw him into her own insanity, preying on a man in mourning. _Came from the future_? Really?

 

Flynn stood angrily, and started towards the door.

 

“If you think I’m going to listen to any of this – this nonsense, you’re wrong. You said you had information on Rittenhouse, but you sound like a mad woman. My wife and daughter are _dead_ , all because of me, and there’s no getting them back.”

 

“Wait!” Lucy grabbed Flynn’s arm as he started to brush by her. “I’ve been doing this for so long, jumping around through time, I forgot how insane it sounds if you haven’t experienced it. But, just – wait! I have something to show you.”

 

She let go of his arm long enough to reach into her coat pocket. She pulled out a small book emblazoned with LP in the corner of the cover. She opened the book, slipped two photographs out from the back, and handed them to Flynn. The top photo was a picture of himself walking into a building, but not one he recognized. It was a faded black and white shot, and he was wearing a suit he’d never seen before, an old one. His face was slightly blurred and turned away, as though he’d been moving away from the camera. In the background of the photo, he could just make out Lucy standing next to a car as old as the suit.

 

“That was from 1965. We were – well, it’s not important. Someone I know took the picture and passed it on to me with a bunch of information about Rittenhouse.” Lucy continued to talk about the picture, but Flynn wasn’t listening to her words any more – he’d moved on to the second photograph. And _he knew this picture_.

 

It was a newer photograph, but one that had been carried around in a wallet since it had been taken. The edges were bent and worn away from where someone had taken it out repeatedly to look at it. There was a small blotch in the corner where a drink had spilled and dried on it before anyone had noticed. And Flynn knew what he would find if he turned it over: “Garcia, Lorena, Iris. 2010”, written in his wife’s spidery handwriting. A family portrait for Iris’s first birthday.

 

“This is… this is mine. How did you get this? How?” Anger was suddenly boiling up in him, a familiar burst of heat that had been rising up since he’d first found Iris on the floor of their home days before. “Did you take it from my wallet when I wasn’t looking, hmm? Slip it out and hide it in your book there, along with some fake you mocked up somehow? To trick me?” Flynn hissed at the woman blocking his way out.

 

“No, I didn’t! I promise! Just look at your wallet. Your photo is still there. Look at it, please. Believe me,” Lucy said desperately. “I did get it from you, but not yet.”

 

This was beyond ridiculous now. This was complete madness. It was complete madness that Flynn thrust the photos back to her and took out his wallet, careful to brush back his jacket so Lucy could see the gun he had holstered. It was complete madness that he was checking the story of this… con artist. It was complete madness that his photo was sitting right there where it always did. One copy in his wallet, another in her hand.

 

And it was that picture that broke him.

 

Flynn slid to the floor, dropping the wallet and burying his face in his hands. None of this could possibly be real. His discovery of Rittenhouse and the connection to Mason Industries. Lorena and Iris gone. This strange woman telling him that she was from the future. That she would help him.

 

“I think I saw something that looked kinda like coffee back in the lobby. I think we could both use some,” Lucy’s voice said from above him. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” And in a flurry of lock, door, and key, Flynn was alone again. And an inkling of hope was blossoming inside him for the first time in too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started working on this a while ago (because why do homework when you can spend hours working on something completely unrelated?) and set it aside when the cancellation was announced. But after the surprise renewal - and what a surprise, eh? - I decided that I should finish it before all my ideas and theories get completely wiped out by the show. This isn't completely done yet, so I can't promise a regular schedule of updates, but I hope to wrap it up sooner rather than later.
> 
> Also, you can find me over at jessenigma.tumblr.com if you want to chat!


	2. Chapter 2

_“Wyatt, did I tell you that my mother gave me a journal right after we came back from Paris? She said ‘what do we do in our family when we go through tough times?’ and gave it to me. Because in our family, we write things down.”_

_“Was it –“_

_“Yeah. It was._ The _journal.”_

_“Dammit, Lucy. Why didn’t you say anything before now?”_

_“You know how much I don’t want this journal to be real. How much I wish I’d never heard of Rittenhouse. How much I don’t want_ my mother _to be one of them. I didn’t want to say anything about getting the journal from her because I thought maybe I still had a choice about whether I would make it real.”_

_“Lucy, you still have a choice. You can always choose.”_

_“I can choose. I am choosing the only option I can see open to me right now. I don’t know how the journal gets to Flynn or why or any of that. But there has to be a reason why it exists, and the only thing I can think of is that having it gets us to here, to a place where we can end Rittenhouse completely instead of just hopping around after them cleaning up messes.”_

_“Have you read the one you got from Flynn?”_

_“No. Not yet. But I think I’ll need to.”_

 

\--

 

True to her word, Lucy brought back two styrofoam cups brimming with coffee and sat with him, talking quietly about time travel and Mason Industries, as he gradually began to pull himself back together.

 

“I don’t understand how any of this is possible,” Flynn said hoarsely some time later. He’d managed to get up and stagger over to the side of one of the beds where he now sat, clutching his half-empty cup.

 

“To be honest, I don’t understand how it’s possible either. I’m a historian, not a physicist,” Lucy said from her seat on the opposite bed. “But I do know that it _is_ possible.”

 

She picked up the journal from the nightstand separating the beds, opening it and flipping to a page of rough sketches. The drawings looked like nothing Flynn had seen before – a sphere surrounded by rings sketched next to a larger sphere circled with lights.

 

“This is them,” Lucy said. “Connor Mason’s time machines. I’ve ridden in both of them. This –“ a finger tapped gently on the ringed sphere “– is the Lifeboat. It’s the oldest, holds the fewest people. And this is the Mothership. It’s bigger, more reliable. It’s newer.”

 

“And you think I should, what? Just steal one of them? Is that what your plan for taking down Rittenhouse is?”

 

“I think it might be the only way. Stealing the Mothership would incapacitate Rittenhouse’s program, even though they would still have access to the Lifeboat.”

 

“And how do you know that?”

 

Flynn glanced sharply at Lucy, suspicious once again. He had been willing to listen after she’d shown him the photographs, but he’d almost let his sense of relief ( _finally, a way to get justice for Lorena and Iris_ ) lull him into complacency. Lucy had said she could help him, had explained how she could be here, but who was she really?

 

Lucy ducked her head, evading his glance. Her hands trembled slightly against the journal. But her voice came out as clear and steady as it had all day.

 

“I said I’ve known you for fifteen years. I’ve been working with people from Mason Industries for as long as I’ve known you. We’ve been trying a lot of ways to fix things Rittenhouse is doing. Not just to you, but to me and to my friends and to so many other people.”

 

“And you came to me because?”

 

“Because I’ve always known we were destined to work together. We…didn’t always see eye to eye, so I fought it for so long. But this is important. We need to do this. You need to do this. To get your family back and fix things.”

 

Lucy caught his eye then. Her expression was serious, sad. Flynn sat in silence for a long time, mulling her words over. She was obviously still hiding something from him, and working with people from Mason Industries didn’t really sound very promising. But she hadn’t hurt him yet, hadn’t acted like any honeytrap he was used to dealing with. She was vulnerable here with him. His instincts told him that, even if she was hiding something, Lucy was someone he could trust in this. Someone who could understand what it was like to lose someone through one wrong decision.

 

“Okay. If this can bring back my wife and my daughter, I’ll do it. Tell me what I need to know.”

 

She handed the journal over to him.

 

“This has everything I can tell you. It isn’t complete. I could only record what I saw. But it’s there. You’ll need to read it for yourself.”

 

Flynn flipped through the book’s pages. Lucy had only shown him the time machine sketches, but there were pages full of writing, news clippings and other drawings scattered here and there amongst them. As he skimmed through, he could pick out dates and places. Paris, 1927. Chicago, 1893. San Antonio, 1836. A few names here and there. Wyatt. Rufus. Jiya. Jessica. There was his name too - _…Flynn sabotaged…, …we thought Flynn was trying…_ – but none of it made sense to him.

 

“What is this?” he asked. “What do you mean ‘what you saw’?”

 

Lucy’s lips were pressed together, her expression slightly wary.

 

“That is a record of everything I did to fix history after you went after the people who killed your family in 2016.”

 

Flynn barked out a dry laugh. He wanted so much to believe what Lucy was saying, but this might be too much. The existence of a time machine was one thing, but a journal from the future all about his actions?

 

“It’s 2014. How do you know I’ll even go through with what you say I will? What if I decide not to? Wouldn’t that change things for you?”

 

“I don’t know that you’ll do anything. Time isn’t immutable, I know that way too well by now. But I think you won’t change much, even though I wish you would change things for me, at least a bit.”

 

“You wish I –“

 

“Never mind. I’m sorry, but I’m running out of time to explain any more. I took a huge risk coming here like this. The longer I stay, the more problems could pop up. We calculated how long I could stay, how much it would hurt things, and it was never going to be long enough for me to explain everything I needed to you to know.” Lucy was looking distractedly at a watch on her wrist, fussing with it for a second longer before standing and beckoning to Flynn.

 

“I need you to see this.”

 

Flynn looked askance at the woman as she began unlocking the motel room door.

 

“You’re leaving? Just like that? All you’ve done is drop information about time machines on my head and handed me a journal full of stories. Lucy, please.” Flynn caught her elbow, silently begging her to explain just a little more.

 

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said softly. “I wish I could stay and explain everything in person. But I wasn’t kidding when I said what I’m doing is risky. Time travel is risky. You having what I’ve given you is risky. If there were any other way to do this, believe me, I would do it.”

 

“But?”

 

“But I’ve tried everything else. It didn’t work. I don’t even know if this will. I’m just hoping it will.”

 

“If you’re from the future, shouldn’t you already know?”

 

Lucy smiled a tired smile at him, delicately pulling her arm from his grasp.

 

“I know what I know right now, Flynn. Nothing more. The journal has everything in it, which is why I brought it to you. If you read it, you’ll understand, I promise. Now come on. I need you to see this.”

 

She finished unlatching the door and slipped outside, waiting for Flynn to follow. The parking lot behind the building was still blissfully empty of everything but empty dumpsters and the beaten-up sedan he’d hotwired to get to the funeral – but now Lucy was pointing to a stretch of space next to the dumpsters expectantly.

 

“Watch right there. It should be any time now…”

 

And suddenly a sphere surrounded by spinning rings popped into view, just where Lucy had indicated. The machine from the sketches in the journal.

 

Dear god.

 

It absolutely was real.

_This_ was what he had found evidence of. This…contraption that had brought this wonderful woman to him. This was what all those organizations were trying so hard to cover up.

 

And he could help unmake it all with Lucy and that journal.

 

She laughed gently at the expression on his face.

 

“It’s always a surprise to see it land, I know. At least two supposed UFO sightings were actually us. That’s why I had you bring us here and get that room. They needed the privacy to land, and I needed to be able to get to the ship quickly. No better place than an empty parking lot where nobody wants to stay too long or look too hard.”

 

Lucy looked up at Flynn’s face. Leaning forward, she reached up to press a soft kiss to his cheek.

 

“Garcia Flynn, I know you’re a good man inside. I want to warn you off doing this more than you know. But we’ve both been fighting Rittenhouse for so long, I can’t do that. I need you to do this. Just…take care. And you _must_ get this journal back to me. You’ll know when.”

 

“Lucy –“

 

“I have to go, Flynn. Remember the journal. And stay safe.”

 

Squeezing his hand one last time, Lucy turned and sprinted towards the machine. As Flynn watched, a door slid open and two voices were peppering the air with hurried questions as she climbed inside the Lifeboat.

 

“Did you –“

 

“— the journal, did you  –“

 

“— go along with it?”

 

“— timeline?”

 

The door slid shut as the rings around the machine began spinning. Suddenly, it blinked out of existence as if it had never been there at all, the same as it popped in. The only evidence Flynn had ever had a visitor rested on the bed of this ratty motel room.

 

Lucy Preston had been there for three hours and twelve minutes. Such a short time to upend Flynn’s life. But now he had a new mission. Time to get to work.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Rufus, what do you know about codes?”_

_“Codes? If it’s not computer code, not much, that’s more Jiya’s thing. She was really into spy stuff as a kid. Why?”_

_“I’ve been reading the journal.”_

_“Really? You decided to read it after all? Even with what Flynn said?”_

_“Yeah. It’s just… Rittenhouse had to have known about it. Flynn never kept it a secret. Emma definitely would’ve known about it. And if it really was a future me who brought it to Flynn, why would I risk them finding out everything about our missions? About my personal life? Unless there was a reason I wanted to get the journal back to the past.”_

_“I’m just going to ignore the fact that it can’t be future you right now. Are you’re thinking there’s some kind of code hidden in your journal? With, what, information on Rittenhouse?”_

_“Exactly! I mean, look at this right here. Does that sound like me? Like something I’d write?”_

_“Not really, but it’s your journal, Lucy. Are you really sure you weren’t just having a bad day when you wrote it?”_

_“No, I think it means something. A signal. I just don’t know what.”_

_“If you really think there’s something to it, we can take a look at it.”_

_“Thanks, Rufus. I know you guys have a lot to do already and I appreciate it. Have you heard anything new about the location of the Mothership?”_

 

_\--_

After months of reading and rereading, Flynn felt like he knew the mysterious Lucy Preston inside and out. The journal was not, as he’d thought the first time he’d looked through, just a record of events. No, it was a real journal – complete with Lucy’s musings on everything from how exciting time travel was to how much she didn’t miss camping in a coffee shop with piles of grading to finish.

 

She came across so vividly on the page: a talented scholar eager to prove her worth, a devoted sister (even when she supposedly didn’t have a sister) and more than devoted daughter, a good friend under difficult circumstances, and a woman who wanted to experience everything. She apparently was also more than a bit of a gossip about her associates, but in fairness it was her private journal. All in all, though, most of what the journal said lined up with what background research Flynn had managed to do on the mystery woman who’d come in and given his anger a new purpose.

 

Born in 1983, one sister seven years younger, father died of cancer when she was a teenager. College, graduate school, teaching jobs at multiple colleges including the University of Chicago before landing a tenure-track position in the history department that her mother had revitalized. Flynn had even found an accident report from 2002 – a one-car accident in a river between her college and her home, a bystander calling 911 after pulling her out of the water. All of this lined up with the Lucy he knew from the journal.

 

There were some journal entries that seemed oddly out of character for the kind of person he thought Lucy was, though. It was this discrepancy that had brought him to a corner of a library in Topeka an hour before closing, piggybacking off their public wifi to do a little more research on her. His plans were nearly complete now: he’d contacted the man at Mason Industries, who had turned out to be a project manager more than happy to fill in gaps about the company’s time travel project that Lucy’s journal left open. He’d gone back to eastern Europe and reached out to his contacts to get the manpower he needed to break in for the machine and get his mission going. He’d even made sure to lay more than a few false trails for his former colleagues, courtesy of willing friends in Chechnya.

 

But before Flynn did anything else he couldn’t undo, he wanted to make absolutely sure that Lucy was clean. Or, at least, that the Lucy of right now was clean. He didn’t feel too guilty as he broke into her university email, the one last place he needed to check.

 

“Meeting…meeting…can I get an extension…meeting…” he muttered under his breath, conscious of the handful of people sitting nearby working on their computers. “Nothing but meetings and students, Lucy. I wouldn’t bother with a stronger password to protect these either.”

 

A new email notification popped up as Flynn scrolled through the list. _Re: bereavement leave procedures_. Another thing from the journal verified – Lucy’s mother was terminally ill with cancer. Though in fairness, that had been one of the easiest things to find when he first started looking. That history department was awfully proud of their former chair’s legacy and eager to let the memorializing begin early.

 

Logging out of Lucy’s email and closing his laptop, Flynn settled back into his chair. He needed to move soon. The library staff was sure to politely boot him out of the building shortly, and the city was too small for him to feel fully at ease staying any longer. Lucy was clear as far as he could possibly tell, and he trusted everyone he’d contacted to set up his plan. But…

 

But part of him was still worried. Flynn had made it this far on little more than hope and the burning need for revenge. What if this didn’t work? What if it was all just a bunch of smoke and mirrors after all? He was so used to the uncertainty of intelligence work and to planning missions that could easily go south, but he’d always had someone with him then, someone who was also involved in the plans. Now it was all on him.

 

And if he messed up, he would absolutely lose his only chance to see Lorena and Iris alive again.

 

(And he would never see this brilliant woman with her journal again, whispered a voice in the back of his mind. Never get to work with her like the journal promised he would.)

 

When a tired-looking woman stopped by his table to tell him the library was closing, Flynn nodded absently and packed up his computer. It was time to call his man on the inside and give him the heads up. Next Tuesday was the date marked in the journal and he didn’t want to be late.

 

The Hindenburg was calling.


	4. Chapter 4

_“We figured it out, Lucy. You were right. There’s a code hidden in parts of the journal Flynn gave you.”_

_“Oh my god. What does it say?”_

_“We haven’t deciphered all of it yet, but some of it looks like dates. And here’s the really big thing. Rufus and I have been recording everything I see during the seizures and trying to approximate dates to see if there’s some kind of connection. When I looked at your journal, everything lined up. All the dates I found in the code were dates that we’d already figured out I’d seen.”_

_“What do these dates mean? If you’re seeing something in the past from those dates, there must be something going on there, right?“_

_“We think it may have something to do with events that Rittenhouse wants to change. They’re affecting time somehow, and whatever happened to me in the Lifeboat makes me more sensitive to it. If Emma hadn’t found out a way to partially suppress the Lifeboat’s connection with the Mothership, we could probably figure it out, but now we’re just having to guess.”_

_“We have to do_ something _with this. I just wish we had more information. I don’t even know if I’m the one who put the code in there. But someone did and we need to know why.”_

 

\--

Flynn’s shoulder throbbed as he sat at the table in his makeshift bedroom in the warehouse. The gunshot wound from Wyatt had just been a graze, not enough to keep him down for very long, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt.

 

One of his men had sewn the wound up neatly and efficiently, pulling gauze, needle, and gloves from the nearest first aid kit once they’d gotten back to the present day. The smell of blood and rubbing alcohol was still in the air – he had waved the man away after he finished the last suture, a “I’ll clean this up, go on,” muttered into the air – as Flynn flipped back through the journal again.

 

Why was he still sitting here in this godforsaken place, clinging to a worn journal for comfort? What on earth was he even doing?

\--

For all his calculations and plans, adrenaline had carried the day when Flynn and the crew he’d so painstakingly assembled stormed Mason Industries and stole the Mothership.

 

It felt so good to finally put the pieces into motion. Flynn had always felt relief before during missions, pride at a planning job well done. But this feeling? It was amazing. He couldn’t even bring himself to regret the shooting he’d done – innocent people. Or, at least as innocent as they could be, working for Mason on his secret project, letting Rittenhouse reign over history. Later, he would feel guilty. Later, he would look at himself in a mirror and ask if he could face his girls after the blood he’d spilt on their behalf that day. But in the heat of the moment in the lab that housed the time travel project, he felt nothing but satisfaction. That satisfaction stayed all the way through their time jump, Anthony Bruhl’s expert hands at the Mothership’s controls just as agreed, and all the way through his first sight of the Hindenburg soaring overhead. It stayed as he ingratiated himself onto the ground crew and arranged for the mooring ropes to be picked up before they could drag in the mud. It stayed as the ship landed neatly and passengers disembarked. Everything he’d planned falling into place like puzzle pieces, meticulously situated one by one. Every little change adding up to the downfall of Rittenhouse and the return of his family.

 

Finally meeting the younger Lucy Preston, the one who was still just a history professor in over her head, did not go as he’d planned, however.

 

She didn’t look much different at all. There was no sparkle of silver in her hair. The laugh lines hadn’t yet had time to settle into her face. She had been beautiful when he met her at the start of this strange quest, and she was beautiful now.

 

But she was seriously interfering with his plans. Why?

 

In the back of his mind, Flynn had known that their relationship was unlikely to be the smoothest. He knew that she wasn’t going to be happy with his plans – that the Lucy who’d written the journal hadn’t been happy about them, even if she hadn’t been explicit about the precise details that had troubled her so. But it was profoundly frustrating to see her with the two men she’d written about at the airfield, desperately searching for him. Desperately trying to stop him from doing what he needed to do. As much as he appreciated her help up until now, he’d put too much into this to have it fail before it could even start. And if that meant sending one of his men to bring Lucy to him or if it meant getting her and her soldier and her pilot thrown in jail to keep them busy, he wasn’t going to be very sorry.

 

After all, Rittenhouse hadn’t apologized for all peripheral damage they’d caused either. They hadn’t cared one bit about it. The older Lucy understood that, even if the younger Lucy didn’t yet.

 

But as he stood, gun in hand, next to the flaming wreckage, its heat going unnoticed over the angry determination burning deep inside him, part of Flynn regretted the necessity of the threat. He wanted her to understand – this was something bigger than both of them. Maybe the younger Lucy couldn’t appreciate it now because she didn’t know her own destiny, but one day she would. And they could work together like they were meant to do.

 

Of course, another part of Flynn was happy to threaten the Lucy who was still working at the behest of the same people who’d hurt him. And it was this Flynn who decided to use her as a shield and this Flynn who got himself shot by an angry soldier he’d underestimated.

 

He fumed all the way back to the Mothership, shoulder bleeding where Wyatt’s bullet – not in the journal, thank you Lucy – had struck. This pain wasn’t unfamiliar, nor was the cold anger building inside him. All this planning, everything he’d pinned on this working. It was all for nothing. He had to start over again, and now his time constraints were even worse. Never enough time, even with a time machine.

 

“Need help with that?” Anthony asked from the pilot’s seat, craning to look at him as he eased his injured arm under the seat straps.

 

“No, I’m fine,” Flynn said brusquely. “It’s just a graze. Don’t you have a job to do?”

 

Anthony turned back to his controls as the other men in the Mothership mercifully took the hint and avoided eye contact as the Mothership took off. The empty seats that only hours ago had held men Flynn had willingly sacrificed to his cause didn’t help the mood.

 

Dammit.

\--

 

And now Flynn was sitting, looking at the journal again. It had brought him this far, however unsuccessfully. He had to trust there were more secrets it could reveal, more it could share about how he could wind his way through time and fix things. Right?

 

Lucy had said that history was mutable. He’d hoped that meant that he could change what was already written here. His plans for the Hindenburg hadn’t changed anything in the journal, as far as he could tell. All that planning, all those men, everything, had seemingly been for nothing.

 

So why not try changing things a little more directly? A little more hands-on?

 

Flynn stood swiftly, journal in hand, and grabbed a clean shirt. If the ship was recharged (and they needed to do something about speeding that up), it was time to go. History waited for no man, and the sooner this was done, the sooner he could be done.

_  
_


	5. Chapter 5

_“I have to get inside Rittenhouse.”_

_“What? No! You can’t, they will_ kill you _, Lucy.”_

_“No, they won’t, Wyatt. I’m their golden child, remember? Practically royalty. I just need to find a way to convince my father that I’m ready to embrace my legacy.”_

_“And you think he’ll buy that?”_

_“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother would, which is why I’m going to him instead. But I think I’m too valuable to Rittenhouse for them to just let me go. And this way, I can get all the information I need to take them down once and for all. That’s all we need right now – information.”_

_“This sounds like suicide, Lucy. You can’t. I won’t let you.”_

_“I let my grandfather do it. I encouraged him to stay in Rittenhouse and get information for sixty years. How could I risk his life and not be willing to risk my own? There are people getting hurt and I can’t just sit by and let it happen when I could stop it.”_

_“Ethan Cahill was already involved. There’s no way you could’ve helped him get out of a mess he made for himself. But you aren’t a part of Rittenhouse and you don’t have to be. We’ll get the information another way.”_

_“How? How do we get the information?”_

_“What about the journal?”_

_“You know it doesn’t have everything, even if we could decode everything that’s hidden in it. And things change. I can’t take that risk. I know you don’t like it, and I know Rufus won’t like it either, but this is what I have to do.”_

\--

Damn, damn, damn, _damn_.

 

How many more failures was Flynn going to have to rack up before he finally got a single unqualified victory?

 

(How many more sins would he have to repent before he could finally avenge his family?)

 

How difficult could it possibly be to ensure that someone else's assassination plot was actually carried out? With the benefit of hindsight and thorough knowledge of where the conspiracy had failed, it should've been easy.

 

Let Abraham Lincoln die, leaving history unchanged there. Step one. Follow through with Johnson, Seward, and Grant. Step two. Simple. The journal had been somewhat vague on events here, surely there was room enough for Flynn to push through some kind of victory with his efforts.

 

Wrong.

 

Flynn had honestly thought that Lucy would listen when he confronted her at the train station in Washington. Had waited for just the right moment to pull her aside and drop more hints about what he knew about her future – their future – careful not to spill too much.

 

(Had ruined it by grabbing her arm and threatening her. One more sin and nothing compared to what he would do later.)

 

But of course, she hadn't. Why would she? And so he'd been badly shaken to find her in Lincoln's box. For all that Flynn had seen her speaking familiarly with the other man at the train station, he hadn't appreciated that she'd managed to befriend Robert Todd Lincoln of all people and somehow convinced him to invite her along to the fateful performance. Of course, the ever-vigilant historian, so eager to keep history on course and moving right along, finding her own way to ensure nothing changed.

 

For a few heartbeats, he'd really hated her for that. For not just listening to him for once and letting him do what he needed to do for his family.

 

And so Flynn had felt nothing but cold as he threw aside the blood-soaked Lucy and fought his way down to the stage and out through the back of the theatre.

 

The others had been waiting for him back at the Mothership, Anthony ready at the controls as always. Anthony's expression had been inquisitive, but he'd said nothing to Flynn then; just brought them back to the familiar ramshackle warehouse. It wasn't until later, while he was cleaning his guns and thinking about what plan he could ruin next in this stupid quest, that Anthony finally came to him.

 

-

 

The other man cleared his throat quietly behind him.

 

"No, I don't know where we're going next. I don't know when I'll know. Don't you have something you need to be doing?" Flynn said, refusing to look away from the gun he was methodically cleaning.

 

"I was working on the charging problem," Anthony said shortly. "It might be almost impossible to manage, but...atomic power could run the Mothership for hundreds of years. Like a battery."

 

Flynn spun to look at the other man then, setting aside the gun and dropping the rag he was using to clean.

 

"An atomic battery? You can just do that, you can just make a battery like that?"

 

Anthony's expression was steady, but he looked pale, almost sick.

 

"It's never been done before, not for something like this. Mason didn't think it would be a viable option for his time machines, but I've been working on the numbers for years. It's possible, more than possible – if you can get your hands on the core of a nuclear bomb. You'd need that plutonium."

 

"And if we can get this bomb core, you can make this battery? It'll be safe?", Flynn asked, plans beginning to form in his head. If there wasn't any need to stop and charge the machine, if he could safely move everyone whenever necessary...just maybe that could make the difference in getting at Rittenhouse.

 

Anthony laughed. It was a short, bitter laugh that cut off abruptly.

 

"Safe? I can't make any guarantees, Flynn. It's not like I have a lot of hands on experience. But it probably won't kill us."

 

"And you have an idea of where we could get access to one of these bombs?"

 

Anthony looked a bit shakier then, almost like he regretted saying anything at all about the subject.

 

"I have a few ideas. I...Nevada would be a good start. I'm no historian, but there were a lot of nuclear tests out in the desert in the 1960s."

 

Flynn waved Anthony away then, sitting back down at his work table, gently shifting his guns aside and pulling his computer closer. "I'll figure it out. Go on, get whatever you need to make the battery."

 

He sat absorbed in his plans for the rest of the night... deliberately ignoring whatever the journal might have to say about his success this time.

 

-

 

The only saving grace with the jaunt to Las Vegas was that they had managed to come away with what they'd gone there to get in the first place.

 

Flynn's plan had actually started out pretty well. He'd successfully blackmailed Judith Campbell and he'd managed to lay a (hopefully unnecessary) trap for his own personal nuisances in advance. Flynn had finally gotten ahead of the journal's dire predictions for this particular trip – or so it seemed – and for a few fleeting hours, it looked like this might be the true success he needed. But it had all gone downhill so fast yet again.

 

Anthony had always sworn, from the very beginning of their time working together on this whole scheme, that he was the project head, that he was the one who knew the most about the Mothership and the project's capabilities for finding it in time. He'd said there were some younger employees who were very talented but who were unlikely to be a threat to any of Flynn's plans because they didn't have the experience he did.

 

And yet Flynn had found himself driving angrily into the desert to demand an explanation for exactly how the company that Anthony had sworn couldn't track anything more than the Mothership's place in time could suddenly pinpoint them with frustrating accuracy in both time and space. There was no real historical reason that should've led the trio following him to Las Vegas so readily, and yet there they were, in uniforms clearly stolen from the same backroom he'd insinuated himself into only hours before.

 

Far too quick.

 

Anthony had looked even worse then than he had the night before as he stood up and threatened Flynn over Rufus out there in the desert. As he stood there and told Flynn that he'd given up everything for what they were doing. The other man had looked better by the time they'd gotten access to the bomb, had acted like he always did as he carefully opened the bomb and placed the core in the case he'd assured Flynn was enough to transport it back to their warehouse safely.

 

But Flynn had been rattled all the same. He'd trusted Anthony because the journal had made it clear that Anthony was a willing participant in the fight against Rittenhouse -- and up until then, nothing had really changed his mind about that. The other man had given him information upon information, had piloted through time wherever Flynn had directed him, had come to him with plans and concerns of his own.

 

Was he wrong?

 

The fears had taken a backseat to the adrenaline rush of cars and gunfire and to the hurried burial of the plutonium, but they'd never really gone away.

 

Damn it all. This had been a victory in the end, but at what cost?

 

-

 

Flynn sat lost in thought back in the warehouse as he sketched out the last few strands of his plans for the next jump. They needed a good decoy operation to buy Anthony a little time to build the battery before Lucy and the others figured out why they needed the plutonium in the first place, and the one Flynn had in mind seemed promising. But as the time crept later, his thoughts kept drifting back to what Anthony had said to him back in the desert.

 

_All a means to an end, huh?_

 

He'd stacked up so many losses just in the brief time he'd been doing this mission. And now he was planning to do something that he knew would horrify Lorena above everything else he'd done already with potentially even graver consequences.

 

All a means to an end.

 

Right?

 

But what end?

 

Damn it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I didn't plan terribly well when posting the first few completed chapters of this fic, so this chapter is later than I hoped it would be. But thank you for the kudos and comments. They are always appreciated! And as always, thank you for reading. :)


	6. Chapter 6

_“Lucy, I don’t know if you’ll get this. But just in case you can, I have to tell you something. Flynn broke out of prison today. I think he’s trying to track you, and I don’t know what he’ll do if he thinks you’re really working with Rittenhouse. Please stay safe. Please. Let us know you’re okay. Let me know you’re okay.”_

_“Lucy, please let me know if you get this message. If you’ve gotten any of my messages. It’s been weeks now. Please.”_

_“Lucy, Rufus wants you to get in touch with him. It’s about Jiya. She saw something the other day, and it might be really important. He’s sent some kind of encrypted thing to your university email so you can get information to us. Okay?”_

_“Hey, Lucy, I just wanted to let you know that we decrypted something else from the journal. It looks like it might be part of a membership roster, but we’re looking into it. Rufus said he still hasn’t heard from you and it’s been two months. We can come pull you out whenever you need us to. Whatever Rittenhouse has isn’t worth your life, Lucy. You can come help us here with the Lifeboat. Be safe, please.”_

_“I promise this is my last phone call, Lucy. Thanks for sending us the information, and I’m sorry if anyone noticed all the messages. Agent Christopher wanted me to tell you that her people have tracked Flynn to the east coast, so if you’re still in California, you should be safe for now. You know how to reach us if you need help.”_

\--

Dust was heavy in the air and Flynn wasn't sure about this new location they were holed up in. Sure, the church seemed abandoned -- half the pews were in various states of disrepair and shoved against the walls, there were water stains in practically every corner, and Karl had yelled something about used hypodermic needles when he was looking for a place to set up the remnants of their weapons arsenal. But the warehouse in Oakland had been abandoned too and seemingly well off the radar of anyone's attention, and yet they'd still lost almost everything to that raid. This church seemed even more vulnerable with its huge windows at every turn, but this was the place Anthony had wanted, with enough light and room for him to work on perfecting the battery after they'd jumped back from Germany.

 

Once they'd made their escape in the Mothership, Anthony had sworn that the raid was just the fault of the power drain. That anyone with access to data from the local power grid could've picked up that kind of massive power usage if they'd known to pay attention to it. That having the battery installed would avoid the kind of attention that recharging would inevitably bring, and that no one at Mason Industries could track them that closely any other way, that it just wasn't possibly to do that.

 

But Flynn was starting to suspect that Anthony might not be so reliable any more. And he didn't really know what to do about that.

 

He didn't really know what to do about a lot of things.

 

-

He hadn't been lying or exaggerating when he'd told Lucy that he was a patriot for his work against Rittenhouse. But patriotism is a funny thing.

 

Flynn was, by merit of his mother's citizenship, an American. He'd even been born there, his pregnant mother making the trip home to stay with her parents before returning to her husband with a newborn in tow. But he hadn't set foot in the country again until he was nearly 7 and hadn't lived there for longer than a summer until he went to college. Between his mother's job and his father's, his family had moved all around Europe; two years in one country, three years in another. He liked the idea of America, the country that his mother loved so much, she'd moved away from it in order to help protect it. But despite the passport bearing his name, it was difficult to think of himself as an American. It was difficult to think of himself as truly belonging anywhere.

 

Even meeting Lorena hadn't done much to change that. She had grown up in California, the wanderlust-struck child of immigrants, and she dreamed of going somewhere new like her parents had. They had met as fellow students in England, and she had been more than happy to accompany him as he found himself moving from country to country cultivating contacts and developing a career in intelligence work he had never expected. She'd picked up new languages with enthusiasm, cheerily chatting with surprised store clerks in broken Greek or Danish, and was eager to distance herself from the tourists and their booming English. Lorena didn't want to be the American, she wanted to embrace the rest of the world and everything else in it.

 

Having Iris, however, made a difference.

 

When Lorena became pregnant, they'd settled near her parents back in California, Lorena working as an interpreter while Flynn picked up freelance work passed on by contacts. It had seemed easier, safer, to raise their child near family and far away from his more dangerous work. Lorena's parents had been thrilled to have their daughter back close again and happy to finally embrace the son-in-law they'd barely gotten the opportunity to know.

 

"It's a pretty good place, this country," Lorena's father had told him once. "I cried when my parents brought me here because I thought it was so big and the food tasted wrong, but it's been good to me. It gave me my home and my family."

 

Flynn didn't think he would ever feel wholly American, nor did he think he would ever fully understand the place, but years of Fourth of July picnics, proud stories of Lorena's family's citizenship ceremonies, and assistance with Iris's kindergarten history lessons had given him a newfound appreciation for the country that claimed him as one of its own. Iris had only ever known the US. Even if he couldn't feel patriotic for his own sake, he could protect the country for his daughter's sake. Destroying a little bit of history to remove a cancer upon it was saving it, surely.

 

But Flynn knew full well what he was doing in Germany wasn't patriotic in the slightest. It was just wrong.

 

He could blame it on the journal. Going after THE nuclear scientist was the perfect way to distract the trio from his real intent behind the bomb theft, and the older Lucy had put all the details in there -- including the fact that she didn't know the real reason behind his jump there. But in his heart, he knew what a poor excuse that made.

 

Lorena would be horrified that he had given money to the Nazis. His father would be beyond irate and his mother heartbroken.

 

(Lucy's very real expression when she heard was its own punch.)

 

And giving von Braun to the Soviets? Passing along nuclear secrets early? The US government was hardly innocent when it came to the Cold War, but he'd spent enough time in eastern Europe to know exactly what the Soviet Union was also capable of. The world would probably be better off without either country getting their hands on the man, but that wouldn't help him much with Rittenhouse.

 

Flynn had almost been relieved to find the barricaded room empty, infuriating as the trio's inexplicable escape with both Fleming and von Braun in tow was, because it took the final decision out of his hands. Nice though it would have been to have both the scientist and the convenient cover for the jaunt to Nevada, he could settle for the distraction. After all, that still bought them the time they needed to build the battery and stop the Mothership from being tethered to a power source and so readily findable.

 

And all it cost him was another little piece of his soul. Excellent work.

 

-

"How long will this battery you've created last?" Flynn asked. The unsettled feeling he had didn't show in his voice, thankfully, but he had the feeling Anthony might've heard it all the same.

 

"If my math is right, and it is," Anthony started confidently, "about three hundred years. All the power you'll ever need without having to plug in."

 

Silence fell after that, and Flynn could feel his face curl with uncertainty. The unsettled feeling was still there, made all the worse by the thought that his time machine was now being powered by an untested battery that had been nothing more than a bunch of theoretical math a few days before.

 

"Should I be getting anything else ready now?" Anthony asked as he broke into the silence, his own expression more hesitant now too. The other men in the room were also looking at him questioningly. "Planning a jump anywhere in particular yet?"

 

Flynn ran a hand across his face, shutting his eyes against the worry inside him.

 

"No, no, nowhere yet. Now that we don't have to worry about being caught charging, we have some time. I'll have to think."

 

Taking Flynn's words as a dismissal, Anthony and the others slipped out of the room, presumably to the makeshift sleeping spaces they'd set up with what few supplies they'd secured. Flynn, meanwhile, sat heavily down on one of the pews and reached into his pocket for the journal.

 

The corners of the journal cover were growing increasingly worn as he carried it around, slipping it from coat to trouser to Mothership as need be, but the initials were still more than legible. He ran his fingers over the L as he sat looking at the book he'd been keeping close to him for so long.

 

It was still difficult to believe that little book had any truth to share with him sometimes. It was hard to believe that the older Lucy had thought so much of him that she would entrust him with her secrets when the present-day Lucy radiated hostility towards him all the time. It was hard to believe that they would ever truly team up to do anything.

 

Maybe it was a hoax after all. Maybe he was just paranoid and Rittenhouse really was nothing. But it was too late to back out now, not with the lengths he'd gone to in order to ensure that he'd have the Mothership powered up and prepared for any jump he might need to make.

 

He would just have to press on and let the damned journal be his guide.


	7. Chapter 7

_“What’s this I’m seeing? I can’t believe it. The ever so principled Lucy Preston, here at a Rittenhouse party? Not prowling the basement with her soldier, but outside in plain view? With a cigarette, even?”_

_“It isn’t what you think, Flynn. Let go of me.”_

_“It’s not what I think? You always did like to interfere with my plans, so why not go all the way to joining Rittenhouse? I’m sure they promised you everything you could want – the opportunity to get Amy back, maybe? What a pity I can’t get my wife and child back the same way.”_

_“I said it isn’t what you think. And you need to not be here.”_

_“And why is that? Because I might spoil your plans for the evening?”_

_“Yes, in fact, you might. And in case you hadn’t noticed, everybody here is on edge, it’s dangerous for you too. You need to leave. I’ll help you get out safely, but you have to go now. They haven’t noticed us out here yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Let. Me. Go.”_

_“Fine, Lucy, I’ll let you go this time. But don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened before, how you betrayed me and my family. If you’re part of Rittenhouse now too, I will still be happy to take you down along with the rest.”_

_“Right now I’d be happy to help you with that.”_

\--

The sky above the cemetery was a brilliant blue once again. It was a painful shade of blue now, and something in Flynn's gut twisted as he stood looking at his family's graves, at the tombstone commemorating Iris and Lorena.

 

Unlike the last time he had been in this cemetery, the weather was warm and only a gentle breeze stirred his hair. It was a beautiful day for a walk in the park or for a family picnic. Exactly the sort of day Lorena would've insisted would be wasted indoors as she threw together some sandwiches and urged Iris to put on her shoes so they could go out and explore as a family.

 

Closing his eyes, Flynn leaned forward and rested his hand on the tombstone. His head bent under the weight of grief mingled with the heavier weight of guilt.

 

"Lena...I shouldn't have come here. I can't look in the mirror any more. But I needed to remember why I'm doing this."

-

 

Flynn had been in a strange, almost bubbly, mood after he'd managed to break into the White House for Nixon's missing tape. His plan hadn't been flawless – he wouldn't've been stuck hiding from the police in that shell of a hotel with three hostages if it had been – but it was more successful than anything else he'd tried thus far. And the tape's contents had been an absolute bombshell. _Finally._ Something concrete about Rittenhouse from outside the journal that he could point to, proof that he wasn't paranoid or delusional about how intertwined they were with American history, shaping and molding it to suit their whims. Something that could lead him to everything else he needed to know...everything else he needed to get his final revenge.

 

Something that could convince Lucy that what he had been telling her all along was true.

 

Buoyed along by his glee, he'd almost laughed at the trio's expressions when he'd revealed the existence of Lucy's journal to them. His instincts had been right about her this time – of course she hadn't told the men about their encounters in past jumps, never mind telling them about the existence of something she was terrified to admit might be real. And of course she was willing to ignore orders being barked at her by her would-be martyr of a soldier in favor of following Flynn's directions to save him.

 

This was the Lucy he'd wanted to see all this time. Strong. Defiant. One step closer to working with him instead of against him. Her anger was up and she was radiant.

 

Though after she left with Rufus in tow and the minutes and hours ticked on, Flynn's mood started to turn sour. He hadn't meant to go so personal with Wyatt, hadn't meant to sit down beside him and share the details of the most painful night of his life. It had just been...a game, trying to recruit a man that he knew was unrecruitable, but the skepticism towards Flynn's story and the pointed barb about having a time machine that he could use to save his supposed family stung more than he wanted to admit. Pulling out the journal and reading off the details about the other man's wife was unnecessarily cruel – it was one of those sections that felt like it was written by a different Lucy, so he wasn't even sure it was all real – but he'd wanted to jab back at Wyatt's own vulnerabilities in revenge. That was when he'd started to lose control and everything stopped being a game.

 

If it had ever been a game in the first place.

 

On some level, Flynn truly did want Wyatt to go along with him and see why the fight against Rittenhouse had to be this way. The other man clearly understood what it was like to have your world shatter into a million pieces in an instant, and he knew what it was like to feel the weight of responsibility for its breaking aching deep inside. Even if Flynn's quest was wholly personal, surely Wyatt could see why he had to do it, could step aside just a little and let him get it done.

 

That hope was always futile, though, and it was only the news that Lucy had called that stopped him from taking his increasingly foul mood out any further on the newly-handcuffed Wyatt after the time limit was up. Even the thought that Lucy had tracked down the information he so desperately sought only lifted his mood slightly. His body ached from Wyatt’s punches, his men were angry, and he just wanted to be done with them all.

 

After the gunfire had died down and everything was quiet again at the house he’d been sent to, Flynn found himself laughing, though the laughter tasted bitter in his mouth. They had been played, and neatly at that. It wasn't much of a surprise by now: the place had been too quiet when he came in, Lucy and Rufus gone and nothing but the telltale signs of a hideout in the rooms. Whatever the pair had found there, they weren't going to share, though Flynn suspected that it was something more than paperwork after all. ("She gave us an address," Karl had told him. "That's all she said.")

 

There was some satisfaction in knowing that the men he'd shot were almost certainly Rittenhouse, but now all he could think about was the slow disintegration of his plans once again. All that risk and no new information. And while he and his men were standing there halfway across town, Lucy was surely back at the hotel finding a way to break her soldier out of his handcuffs again; there was no way they could make it back in time to provide backup for the one guard he'd left there. No hostages now either.

 

Nothing.

 

On his way out the door, Flynn kicked the wall. It was the most satisfying part of the afternoon. And no one spoke as they cleaned up and made their way back to the Mothership.

-

 

Flynn stood with his hand resting on the gravestone for a few long minutes, the breeze gently blowing. Then slowly, he began to gather himself, pulling back from the grave. Warily, he scanned the cemetery, looking for any sign of trouble he might’ve missed while he was busy falling apart, but there was nothing there. Just the breeze and the quiet hush of the empty cemetery.

 

He’d thought that maybe with time, the thought of his family would somehow hurt less, that a callus would form and let him talk about what had happened with distance and clarity. Instead it felt like he was always tearing a scab open, bleeding out his feelings anew. Today had stung worst of all, and he didn’t want to think about how hard Wyatt’s skepticism had hit. It was too close to his own doubts about what he was doing, and he couldn’t stop now.

 

But what would Lorena think?

 

He couldn’t answer that. (Didn’t want to answer that.)


	8. Chapter 8

_“Rufus?”_

_“Oh my god, Lucy! We’ve been trying to get in contact with you for ages, are you okay?”_

_“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I guess. I honestly don’t know any more. But listen, Rufus, I’ve been thinking more about what Flynn said about me giving him the journal and how it shouldn’t be possible for me to travel back within my own timeline.”_

_“That’s why we’ve been trying to contact you. It’s still way too dangerous, but I’ve been going through Anthony’s notes again and I figured out what’s been staring me right in the face this whole time. Anthony went back in time within his own lifetime.”_

_“He— “_

_“He was there in Vegas in 1962, and in Houston in 1969. In all the time I worked with him, he never said how old he was and I can’t exactly go pull personnel files to get a date of birth now, but he saw the moon landing as a kid. He talked about it, Neil Armstrong was his inspiration. But he was still traveling back then just fine.”_

_“But…you’ve always said that you can’t go back in your own timeline.”_

_“And you can’t. You can't go back to a time you've already lived, no going back and... beating up your high school bullies or something like that, awesome as that would be. No affecting your own history. It's way too dangerous.  But technically Anthony wasn’t traveling within his own timeline. He told me once he grew up near Toronto. He couldn’t have met his younger self in a control room in Houston or in a hotel bar in Las Vegas, so he wasn’t directly interacting with his own past. Just the past.”_

_“So you’re saying if I don’t meet my past self and don’t mess with my own life, it could be possible for me to travel within my own lifetime, give Flynn the journal, and come back okay.”_

_“Yeah, theoretically, but Lucy, that’s still really dangerous. Trust me, I saw what happened to the poor pilot we sent back in his own past and I never want to see it again. Anthony knew a lot more about time travel than me. I think we could calculate the odds, but you’d need to be really precise about where you were in the past and where you jump to now. And you couldn’t stay for long.”_

_“But I could do it, right?”_

_“Yeah, I think you could. Lucy – “_

_“Thanks, Rufus. I think we might be able to figure out a way around Rittenhouse after all.”_

_“Just…be careful. It’s bad enough having to jump around in time to fix things without you here in person to help, I don’t want them to catch you there either.”_

_\--_

Stranding the Lifeboat and its crew in the past had been well worth the three painfully long days it took for Flynn's men to track the other time machine down in the woods of western Pennsylvania. Part of Flynn secretly suspected that, much he may wish otherwise, disabling the ship would ultimately be only a temporary solution to his problems. Lucy and the others were far too good at muddling their way through things he'd thought were impossible to change for him to truly believe that he was leaving them stranded there forever. But doing it had bought him time he sorely needed to stop and breathe without fear of sudden discovery.

 

And it was breathing he very much needed as he caught sight of his mother in the Lockman Aerospace offices in 1969.

 

As a child, Flynn had been fascinated with rockets and outer space. It was only natural, growing up as the only child of two engineers working for an aerospace company. But when he had come home at age seven, bubbling over with enthusiasm for a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the first moon landing, his father hurriedly pulled him aside for a whispered conversation as he caught a glimpse of his mother's face falling into a deep sadness.

 

He hadn't understood then the pain his mother felt at the reminder. He hadn't understood that, while the rest of the world had been glued to television sets and radios listening to Neil Armstrong announce his giant leap, his mother had been frantically calling for an ambulance as she watched her son (the brother he knew only as a name) struggle to breathe. He hadn't understood that every mention of that day hit a pain deep inside her. But he understood now.

 

Maybe Flynn could never save Lorena and Iris, much as it hurt him to admit that even a little. But he could save part of his family – save the half-brother he'd never known and the happy mother he'd never truly had the opportunity to meet. Even if he failed to get Rittenhouse and failed to bring back his wife and daughter, maybe this whole time travel venture wouldn't be completely futile.

 

Flynn hadn't wanted to share this line of thinking with Anthony when he first laid out his ideas for messing with the moon landing. It was something he wanted to keep privately for himself, a secret from Anthony, a secret from the rest of his men, and a secret even from the journal he couldn't convince himself to abandon completely. But as Anthony's plans grew increasingly more technical, and Flynn's potential involvement became increasingly marginal ("the most difficult part will be getting into the building, but once we get the right ID card, I should be able to access everything we need to sabotage the takeoff"), Flynn finally confessed that his interest in 1969 involved more than just a potential blow against Rittenhouse.

 

( _"Hmm. If she worked for Lockman Aerospace then, you could get in there, get in contact with her, and then steal the backup punch tape they keep in their offices. The rest, you can leave to me. Helping your family is more important than anything you could do at the control center."_ )

 

And now Flynn was standing in an office looking at the mother he'd never truly known. There she was, still Maria Thompkins, the hardworking widow busy raising her son and taking night classes in engineering. The lines under her eyes showed that she was clearly tired – just raising a young child would be enough to exhaust anyone, never mind everything else on her plate – but she looked so... happy. Though the loss of her husband had obviously been hard, the weight of the world wasn't hanging on her shoulders yet. And yet she drew sketches in that same easy hand that he remembered so well from his childhood.

 

Breaking into the cabinets with the punch tape was a blur. He knew he had the tape he needed, but his mind was still stuck on Maria – on his mother. The plan was working, his plan was going, he could do it, _he could do it_. Even if nothing else went right this day, even if the moon landing stayed exactly the same as it had been, Flynn was going to save his mother from all the pain she'd had that day, and Rittenhouse be damned.

 

Anthony's news that once again the trio of nuisances had pulled off multiple miracles, getting out of 1754 just in time to get their hands on his briefcase in 1969, wasn't exactly welcome – why _did_ he bother trying to delegate? Or, for that matter, why did he keep believing that Anthony knew Rufus's full capabilities even when he had so badly underestimated the younger man before? – but it wasn't enough to hold his attention for long. Anthony was the only one who could turn around the problems with the NASA plan, and Flynn had somewhere more important to be.

 

Maria looked so painfully young as she watched her son clamber up the monkey bars at the playground, Flynn waiting for just the right moment to approach her. The family photo albums had glossed over these years in just a handful of snapshots – his mother holding a newborn Gabriel, a family portrait with her husband and toddler son in front of her parents' small house, and her silhouette passing through the background of a Christmas photo – and it was heartbreaking to see through adult eyes exactly how young his mother had been when she'd suffered so much loss.

 

How had she managed to keep herself together long enough to meet his father? How strong must she have been to keep going despite so many blows against her?

 

Did she ever want to just let everything go?

 

Flynn wished he could've asked his mother about her life before she'd chased work to Europe and met Asher Flynn, wished he could've gone to her and talked to her about everything that had happened with his girls. But she'd died of cancer before he and Lorena had even married, and the only person he could talk to now was this woman who would become his mother one day but who wasn't the warm loving presence he remembered so well. Maria would be his mother, but right now he was a stranger twenty years older than her – not her second child who she'd loved dearly.

 

It was so easy to forget that, though, as he charmed his way into conversation with her. Maria talked like she always had; less confident in her knowledge and abilities as a secretary still finishing her engineering degree, maybe, and putting on a nice face for a man she'd just met, but it was her all the same. Flynn wanted to share every bit of personal knowledge he had with her, to let her know that she was going to be successful in the difficult path she'd chosen to follow and that she would make a new family... as if she would ever believe that a plumber she met at work could hold the secrets to her future.

 

Flynn was able to hold back until after they'd watched the newscast at the ice cream truck, Nixon's voice somberly intoning that the Apollo mission may well be doomed (whatever Lucy and the others might be doing now, at least they hadn't stopped Anthony's plan), but his will broke when Maria asked him about his family. His wedding band had never drawn attention before; no one had asked about a wife before on any of his jaunts, and he was thrown by the question. It hurt to talk about his girls, hurt worse than telling Lucy about them had, because Flynn wanted so much to just throw himself at his mother – _at Maria_ , part of his mind reminded him, _not your mother yet_ – and explain everything to her. To get her validation that he was doing the right thing.

 

Maria's declaration that she would go to the ends of the earth to find anyone who dared hurt her boy was exactly what he wanted to hear.

 

( _But... sometimes it's a lot. Sometimes I wish I could just... let go_.)

 

Flynn had wanted to stay longer with Maria and Gabriel in the park, had wanted to be on hand with the shot of epinephrine in his jacket pocket for his brother lest the fatal bee sting happen earlier than he thought. But once more Wyatt's untimely arrival on the scene had thrown his entire plan off. Flynn couldn't be there with Maria as a welcome guest. He couldn't be sure that he would even be there in time to save Gabriel wherever the sting happened. Damn it all.

 

He rushed out of the park nearly at a run, evading any other vehicles as best he could, but he forced himself to slow down to a brisk walk, slouching down with hands in pockets and blending in with the other people on the sidewalk. It wasn't the way he wanted to go about this, but Flynn had already scoped out Maria's apartment building with the idea of using the balcony as a handy entrance and exit. Slipping into the shadow of nearby trees, Flynn watched as Wyatt parked his car on the street and hurriedly escorted mother and son into the building. A few minutes later, a light turned on inside the apartment and Gabriel came out onto the balcony armed with a bucket and a toy truck. Carefully, Flynn approached the building, climbed onto a nearby shed via a neighboring fence, and clambered over the balcony railing. Gabriel looked up, startled, as he stepped clumsily inside the balcony and slid low to the ground.

 

"Did you come to see my mom again? That man said you did something bad," Gabriel said, eyeing him warily. He held up a toy shovel defensively.

 

"Shh, it's okay, I'm here to do something for your mom. It's not bad, it's –" Flynn cut off as he noticed the bee landing on the boy's arm. Gabriel followed his gaze and began to quietly panic at the sight of the bee.

 

"It's gonna sting me, it's gonna, I'm afraid –" Gabriel began, trying to shake the bee off his arm. Before he could finish his sentence, the bee stung, and the allergic reaction began. Moving swiftly, Flynn reached into his pocket and grabbed the epinephrine from his pocket, flipping off the cap and preparing to inject the medicine. In the background, he could just hear Neil Armstrong's familiar words from Maria's television, followed shortly by Maria's own horrified cries as he pushed the needle in.

 

His escape from the balcony was far easier than he expected. Maria was understandably lost in shock and confusion, more interested in making sure that her son was okay than pursuing a supposed Russian spy, but even Wyatt seemed thrown both by his intended rescue mission and by his speech to Maria. Flynn himself was floating high on the adrenaline of success and ready to speed back to the Mothership.

 

He'd done it. Their greater mission had clearly failed, but his own personal mission was a success. Flynn could change his past and he could save his family. Here was proof: a living brother.

 

Now, to fix Rittenhouse.

 

(And it was so good to see his mother again.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in updating - life intervened just when I got the parts I most wanted to work on.
> 
> The "no traveling within your own lifetime" thing remains the bane of my theorizing life, I have to say. I possibly have put more thought into this whole "if you can't travel within your own lifetime, how can Anthony have traveled to 1969 when there's absolutely no way he's under 50?" thing than the show did. Poor Rufus, none of this is his fault, he didn't know. Magical handwavy science is just so difficult.
> 
> If you would like to join me in a discussion of convoluted timelines, you can find me at jessenigma.tumblr.com. And as always, thanks for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

_“You’re drunk, Lucy.”_

_“So what if I’m drunk? Even though I’m not, actually.”_

_“You are. I’ve never seen you drunk before, Lucy. Have you forgotten where you are?”_

_“I’m at another Rittenhouse party, I know. Only the best booze for them! Only the best of everything! All for the true leaders of the free world!”_

_“You’re not even upset that I’m here. You seemed quite upset the last time I found you at one of these little gatherings. You even escorted me off the premises, as I recall, after telling me that you’d be happy to help me take you down. You don’t seem any happier tonight, though.”_

_“How long do I have to wait, Flynn? How long do I have to keep doing this? Getting information, passing it on. How much longer?”_

_“What are you talking about, Lucy? Doing what?”_

_“Pretending to be part of Rittenhouse. How much longer? You said I brought you the journal, when did I do it?”_

_“You’ve been pretending to be part of Rittenhouse? For how long?”_

_“When did I bring you the journal, Flynn? It can’t be that hard to remember, you kept talking about it all that time, taunting me with everything you knew about me. How you knew what I was meant to be, how we were supposed to work together, so why won’t you tell me what I want to know now?”_

_“Lucy – “_

_“When? I’m not as drunk as you think I am, though trust me when I say that I’ve had a few and I’m not in the mood to listen to any more of your bullshit.”_

_“The first time I met you, you said you’d known me for fifteen years.”_

_“Good. Great. Wonderful. Another decade of this. Just… just go away, Flynn. I don’t know why no one’s come to find out where I’ve gone, I don’t know how you even got in here again, and I can’t handle anything else tonight. I just can’t.”_

\--

Flynn could feel his heartbeat as he waited for the night guard to finish her round of the house. It was a steady pulsing, slow and calm – the calmest he'd been in some time.

 

Getting Henry Ford's key had been a truly tedious business. He hated Arkansas, he hated the self-righteous man who'd grown a conscience just when he truly needed information from Rufus, and he hated the way Lucy was far more willing to help two hardened criminals run free than she'd even been to help him seek justice. Flynn wasn't a stranger to tedium; his intelligence work was so often a string of tiresome information seeking jobs. But after the success with his brother, he just wanted to hurry up and be done with everything already, just find the right thread to pull to unravel everything. Chasing after a pair of lovestruck bank robbers whose only involvement with Rittenhouse was the theft of a key hadn't seemed like that thread. But Flynn had gone back to the journal for the first time in weeks and he'd been struck by the drawing in the book and the translated engraving.

 

The key to the beginning of all time and the key to the end of all time.

 

The words were pompous at best, but they were exactly the kind of thing he would expect to find on an artifact made for a group of self-important Americans bent on molding the world to their own image. Maybe this wasn't the thread he needed either, but it was surely connected to the last pieces of information he needed to finish his quest. The weight of the key in his hand - solid gold, wasn't it? - lent credence to his suspicions. It was heavy, substantial, not a lightweight piece of decorative frivolity. It was ostentatious, yes, but meaningful. This key unlocked something Henry Ford wanted to keep close but hidden, something Flynn now desperately needed.

 

And so, gun in hand, Flynn was able to breathe steadily and slowly, patiently waiting for this one petty obstacle between him and the clock he needed to unlock to move along. This wasn't tedious, this made him feel alive.

 

One distant footstep, two... a door opening and closing, the beam of a flashlight catching on the wall opposite his dark alcove... and footsteps moving away into another room. If his men's observations held true, Flynn had half an hour to unlock the before the guard's rounds brought her back to this room. This was the easiest thing he'd done yet.

 

The clock's hidden mechanisms whirred louder than he'd expected in the quiet room as the case unlocked, and for a split second Flynn wondered if they could've caught the ear of the night guard. But beyond a quick glance to ensure that he was still alone in the room, his focus stayed on the object of his intent: the fragile roll of parchment nestled among clockwork.

 

How long had it been since this was opened? (Had it ever been opened at all? Had anyone besides its author even read it?) How many hands had this passed through before being hidden away in this mechanical work of art? How many secrets could this little thing hold?

 

Flynn's hands were steady as he broke the wax seal and opened the parchment. He skimmed the words written there – _My dearest wife..._   – but his eye was drawn to the signature at the bottom. And as he read the name Benedict Arnold, he felt something inside him ease for the first time in months. The key to the end of all time? Oh no. Ford's key was the key to the end of Rittenhouse before it could even truly begin. This letter was _it_. Rittenhouse's first full meeting laid out neatly by America's first traitor, Flynn's opportunity to make a decisive strike.

 

(Flynn's opportunity to finally bring the trio on board with his plans?)

 

Flynn rolled the parchment back up, slipping it into a pocket of his jacket, and swiftly reset the clock. He had plenty of time to make an escape from the house and plenty of time to ensure it was a clean one, and the night guard wasn't even close to coming back around to the clock's room by the time Flynn was striding away from the building.

 

This was the calmest he had been in some time, but he could feel his heartbeat pick up anyway.

 

This next trip could be his last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life is far too irritating these days, I must say. Despite my best efforts, it interferes far more than it should with getting things done within the timeframe I would like to get them done in. But as always, thank you for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

“ _Lucy? Are you sure calling me like this is safe?”_

_“Honestly, it probably isn’t. But I had to talk to someone, Wyatt. I feel like I’m about to break. I can’t believe I asked my grandfather to do this for decades.”_

_“He wanted to do it, Lucy. I was there, remember? You didn’t force him into it.”_

_“Nobody forced me into this either. But it’s so hard. I told Flynn I would help him take me out, just to get a break from worrying about when I’ll get unmasked.”_

_“You told Flynn what? When?”_

_“It was a while ago. A year, maybe. I just… I was so tired, Wyatt. He found me at one of their stupid parties, and he was angry with me. I needed him to leave.”_

_“He was mad at you? Did he hurt you, are you okay?”_

_“He didn’t hurt me. He just… left. I asked him to go and he did. I don’t even know why. God, Wyatt, he said I told him I’d known him for fifteen years when I brought him that journal. I don’t know if I can wait another eight years.”_

_“Lucy, it’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out, I promise. Rufus has been working on it in between our trips. We’ll get you out safe and sound. Just… keep doing what you’re doing. I’m so sorry you have to do it.”_

 --

Threatening Benedict Arnold had been a risky plan at best. It had involved far more moving parts than Flynn was really comfortable with, and that was even assuming he was able to convince the others to play nicely with their part in it. Anything could've gone wrong – Washington could've realized that Flynn wasn't actually his trusted Prussian spy, Wyatt could've refused to go along even with a bribe, or maybe the history books could've been completely wrong about who knew what when and even all Lucy's knowledge wouldn't help. But if the only way to get to Rittenhouse was through Benedict Arnold, then Flynn was going to get to Benedict Arnold one way or another. The plan would just have to work.

 

One more person, one more trip, one more time. Just one more time. That was all he'd needed.

 

And of course he wasn't going to get it. Damn it all.

 -

 

Most of what he remembered of the horrible mission was Lucy.

 

Flynn had seen the tears threatening to fall from her eyes before they'd set off, Arnold in tow, to meet David Rittenhouse. He'd seen her uncertainty and her sorrow over the prospect of killing the man that had caused so much trouble for them all slowly settle into resignation, her lips pressed tightly as she seated herself in the cart. For just a second, he'd wanted to reach out to her, to assure her that it would all be worth it in the end, to thank her for not running away from what he was asking them to do. But the moment passed and all he could do was take the reins and drive them on.

 

Lucy had looked no happier when they'd stopped to water the horses and the others had left them alone there together. He offered up a story, a piece of himself that had nothing to do with his girls or the crimes he'd committed, but she had seen through him. Had led him to admit to her what he didn't even want to admit to himself: that even if he could save Lorena and Iris with this one last deed, he couldn't see a place for himself in their lives. That he was too stained by all the horrible things he'd done to so many people ( _to her_ , whispered a voice from the back of his mind) to ever be the husband and father he once was. It wasn't enough to stop him, but it was enough to make to him flinch.

 

He'd seen the shocked stiffness of her spine and heard her careful words as she talked with the Rittenhouse boy, listening to him give the elaborate explanation of peasants and clock hands. And he'd seen her balk as David Rittenhouse touched her with possessive hands and disgusting words.

 

He’d felt the kick in his chest as he knelt there and watched Rittenhouse’s men drag her out of the room, a fate he’d led her to.

 

Killing David Rittenhouse brought no relief from the pain. The calmness he expected, he hoped for, didn't descend. There was no happiness in the thought that he had saved Lucy and everyone else from a cold and calculating monster. There was no joy in the idea that he could go home at last and find Lorena and Iris there waiting for him, safe from the death brought to them by this man's organization. Instead, a chilly realization settled on him. The father was gone, yes, but what about the son?

 

Flynn had no words for the churning emotions inside him. The boy was a puppet, echoing the words of his horrendous father. He was only a child, yes, but if he didn't die and take the rotten whole of Rittenhouse out with him, _what was all this for_? Flynn was already soaked in the blood of so many in this whole horrible quest, how could he stop and leave the head of the monster in place? Why couldn't the others see that? There was one last clockmaker ready to fix the workings of the world by his own design, and Flynn had to stop him, had to gum up the works and throw it all away.

 

He didn't want to kill the boy. John Rittenhouse was a _child_ , and if nothing else, Flynn had been a father. The innocence in the boy's eyes had not been unlike the innocence in his daughter's face - and look what he'd done to save her. But what choice could he possibly have? It was a choice between the boy and Iris, and he couldn't stop now. He needed to do this, he _needed to_.

 

How could Lucy not understand? Had she not seen enough, that she could stand there between him and the boy and talk as though he could ever go back to being a father again?

 

He hurt her, he knew. There would be bruises on Lucy’s arm from his grip as he wrenched her around, scratches on her legs from the bushes he'd dragged her through. He would wake up later and remember and there would be shame. But for now he felt nothing but white, cold anger.

 -

Inside the Mothership, there were questions, Anthony’s voice rising above the others to ask what he’d done. Flynn couldn’t answer, couldn’t do anything but shove Lucy into an empty seat and snarl that they were going back to try again.

 

What was he doing?


	11. Chapter 11

_“What took you so long, Flynn? I’ve been waiting for you.”_

_“Lucy? What are you talking about?”_

_“You, I’ve been waiting for you. You keep turning up at all these damn Rittenhouse things. I figured I might as well wait for you. At least now I won’t be surprised.”_

_“You’re sober this time.”_

_“I wasn’t that drunk last time.”_

_“So you’ve said. But do you remember telling me you had another decade of something?”_

_“I remember. It’s still just as true now that I haven’t had anything to drink. I’m still here, slipping information when I can, trying to stall plans when I can’t. Rittenhouse is angry. They don’t understand what’s going on, why they can’t change history and have it stick. I don’t know why they still trust me. Maybe they don’t.”_

_“How cynical of you, Lucy. You’re starting to sound like me. Are you sure you’re okay?”_

_“Sure, I’m great, didn’t you hear? After six years of hiding in Rittenhouse, I’m their star historian. They manipulated my new academic department into giving me tenure early to keep me here in California, and they’ve recruited three of my best undergraduates, so I have to be even more careful about what I tell them. And every few weeks, I get coded messages from my friends in hiding, asking how I remember some new historical event happening. Oh, and then I get the pleasure of seeing you turn up every single time any part of Rittenhouse gets together and wondering if this will finally be the time you get caught.”_

_“Lucy – “_

_“Why are you here, Flynn? Are you here to kill everyone with some new plan that will be just as ineffective as all the others?”_

_“I…I’m not here to kill anyone. Not any more. I’m here to see you, Lucy.”_

_“I can’t help you with your family, Flynn. I can’t even help myself.”_

_“I want to help_ you _, Lucy.”_

 

\--

 

Lucy had been incandescent with rage. And Flynn didn’t care one single bit.

 

Grabbing her and dragging her back to the Mothership with him was one of the most profoundly stupid things he’d done this entire time. Taking her back to the abandoned church to conduct research for him was even more profoundly stupid. He had no idea if Lucy could send some kind of signal back to her team from where she was, had no idea if she could be tracked and if he’d have to vacate the building all over again.

 

And Flynn didn’t care one bit.

 

“How _dare_ you put your hands on me, don’t you _touch me again_ —“

 

Lucy was practically spitting nails by then, but that didn’t stop him from bending down and confronting her face to face. Because, while Lucy might have been incandescent with rage, he himself was well on his way to his own explosion. Another explosion.

 

“How dare I? _How dare I_? I was this close to getting my revenge, Lucy. This close to stopping Rittenhouse _forever_ , cutting it off at the roots. They had no qualms about killing a 5 year old child who had done nothing wrong, why should I care about a 10 year old being raised to think himself superior, hmm? Why? Because you felt sorry for him, is that why?” Flynn spat at the woman in front of him. She glared, her eyes burning even as her hands trembled with no small amount of fear.

 

“Because a 10 year old child is still a _child_ , Flynn. Killing him wouldn’t really stop Rittenhouse, you _know that_ , it would just make you feel better.”

 

He had no words to answer her with. Lucy was right, of course she was right. He'd hesitated in the first place because he knew the boy was just a child. He didn't want to hurt him. But if the choice was sparing John Rittenhouse or bringing back Iris Flynn, Flynn would be damned if he would pick the son of the man who'd brought so much pain.

 

There wasn't any other choice. Right?

 

Flynn had jumped back again. And again. Each time he stepped out of that damned machine, Lucy's face had looked a little more worn down, a little more afraid, even though she was still ready and willing to challenge him.

 

No, he hadn't killed the boy. No, he hadn't killed the father. No, he hadn't been able to do anything _useful_ because Lucy had stopped him before, had let the boy get away and change his name, had let him slip out of history and out of memory to a safe place where Rittenhouse could thrive and grow to strangle everything he had ever loved.

 

Lucy was right to look afraid because Flynn still felt nothing but anger burning cold through him. And if he couldn't take out the root of the problem after all, he would cut down every single branch of the hateful tree.

 

\--

 

There had been no real plan when he'd jumped again with Lucy in tow, just a months-old dossier of research and the intention to get her away from their base of operations as soon as they could.  Seizing the opportunity to take out Edison, Ford, and J.P. Morgan in one blow was irresistible enough right now in his time of complete failure to overlook all the problems that had led him to shelve the idea in the first place. All he could think was that moving one step closer to another branch of the tree would do for now.

 

But Lucy's words as they sat together in a World's Fair tent rattled through Flynn's mind:

 

“You used to care about people. You used to be good.”

 

If there was one thing the journal hadn't prepared him for, it was Lucy's stubborn insistence on believing he could still be saved from his own sins. Even as he grabbed her arm openly on the street to sneer threats in her ear, even as the poisonous words and plans spilled from his mouth, even as he called her expendable and sent her friends to a murderer's den, she still wanted to reach out and convince him that some part of him was worth saving.

 

Surely she couldn't believe that.

 

These days, he could play the part of a decent human being for only a few minutes at a time. Flynn could be the attentive husband watching his new wife eagerly take the stage as an impromptu magician's assistant, but once the trap had been sprung and the target had been caught, the facade was gone and he was back to what he always was now: a sad, monstrous man doing sad, monstrous things.

 

And when his plan fell through once again, as he knew at heart it would the second he tried to rope Lucy into playing along, Flynn still didn't care one bit.

 

Maybe he could be good later. But right now, Flynn felt nothing.

 

Time to find another branch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear, it's been far too long since I updated. But I finally finished a big RL thing and now have some time to work on other things without feeling guilty! I hope to have this wrapped up soon - I've always had an outline and sections already written, it's just a matter of finishing up - and as always, I thank everyone for reading even with my sadly irregular update schedule.


	12. Chapter 12

_“Thanks for meeting me somewhere besides another one of those parties you shouldn’t’ve been at. I needed to talk to you about some details.”_

_“Is it really safe to meet in this classroom? Don’t they watch what you do at work?”_

_“Even the most diligent Rittenhouse recruits on this campus don’t bother with monitoring lecture halls at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. If you actually listen to me for once and do what I ask you to do, you’ll just look like one of my graduate assistants following me back to my office after a class. Here, take these papers.”_

_“Aren’t I little old to be one of your graduate students?”_

_“With that attitude, yes.”_

_“Seriously, Lucy—"_

_“It’s fine, Flynn. It’s a college. Hundreds of students go in and out of this building every single day. You stick out a bit, but no more than any of my older students do. I've seen you pretend to be a dozen people. I assume you can act like an academic for long enough to keep us out of trouble?”_

_“Yes, fine. I'll trust you.”_

_“Good. I need you to talk to you about a conversation I overheard last week, but let's go back to my office first, anyone could walk into this classroom.”_

_"Lucy—”_

_“It's Dr. Preston until you're off campus. Now, which students did you say were asking for an extension on the paper again, Garcia?”_

\--

They had been in the process of taking off, their new pilot steady at the controls of the Mothership, when the C4 blew. Flynn had been surprised he could feel the beginnings of the explosion's shock wave even from inside the ship, but before he could brace himself for the full impact, they were gone – away from Oakland, away from their last safe hideout, away from the present with all its endless complications.

 

“Cutting it a little fine, were we?” he tossed towards Emma with a casualness he didn't truly feel. The nerves surely could be heard in his voice and seen on his face, but she looked as relaxed as she had all day.

 

“This thing can take more than that in a direct hit. It'd be different if it were still packed inside the shell, Anthony knew what he was doing there, but from the outside, that was nothing. The ship wouldn't be able to sustain the force from the jumps otherwise,” Emma said, her own casual tone seeming far more sincere.

 

The ship fell quiet then, the handful of his men still left shifting uneasily in their seats. Flynn watched as Emma deftly landed the Mothership in their new destination, her hands moving confidently, as if she'd never been away from the controls. Like riding a bicycle indeed.

 

“Are we going to talk about Anthony?” he asked abruptly as the ship's door swung open.

 

“Do you really want to?” Emma asked in return, an eyebrow arched.

 

No. No, he didn't want to.

 

\--

 

Going after Emma had been a trial.

 

_"What happens if you win this cause you're so quick to kill for?"_

_"It'll be a better world."_

_"What happens if you don't win?"_

_"Never occurred to me."_

 

He didn't like the man. Flynn didn't like the man, didn't trust the man, didn't want to be near the man. He didn't want to hear the cheap psychoanalysis from someone who'd openly taunted two US marshals before shooting them in the blink of an eye in the middle of a bar. He didn't want to hear jabs at his supposed character from someone so damn gun happy he couldn't put down his weapon for more than a minute along the trail. No, Flynn hadn't fully considered what would happen if he didn't win because there was no way that he could survive losing – if he didn’t win, he would be dead, it was as simple as that. There was no need to think about it any further than that. What would that man know about dying for someone? Flynn wasn't proud of so many of the decisions he'd made in his struggle, of the people he'd chosen to align himself with against Rittenhouse, but he'd be damned if he considered comparing his fight for his family to anything with the Confederacy and its supposed glory.

 

But Jesse James hadn't been completely wrong.

 

Flynn couldn't feel much beyond numbness any more. Sure, he could be jolted in alarm or roused to passion over Rittenhouse for a few moments here or there, but feeling more than that was quickly growing beyond him.

 

(He'd hurt Lucy, he'd come at her with far more than hurtful words this time, and he was sorry but not that sorry because feeling sorry for what he'd done to her would mean that he felt something at all. And even with her journal in hand to remind him of the hope he'd held at the beginning, there was nothing there to feel.)

 

Even his plea to Emma, the umpteenth time he'd tried to convince someone to help him with Rittenhouse, to help save his family, had fallen flat inside him. They were just words now. He meant them because he always meant them; he always wanted to save Iris and Lorena because that was why he'd started everything. He'd bled and he'd lashed out and he'd killed for their sake, following a path he'd set for himself, and giving up now would render all that sacrifice pointless. But even to his own ears, so many of his words rang hollow. _I couldn't run any more, I had to fight, I know what Rittenhouse is like_. All just words.

 

_“You can hide here in frontier land, but if you do, anyone you've ever loved will be destroyed by Rittenhouse.”_

_“But how will I know they won't be destroyed by Rittenhouse if I leave?”_

_“I can't answer that. But...I have to do this.”_

_“...okay. I'll come with you.”_

 

But they were words that must've resonated anyhow. Somehow. Even if Flynn couldn't truly feel them. He counted that as a success, one of the few he'd managed these days.

 

Emma had led the way back to the Mothership, her experienced eyes picking out a back trail from the cabin that skirted around the most hostile parts of both the territory and the terrain. The falling snow created a hush across the landscape, a quiet field of white broken only by their footsteps and the soft sounds of their horse; Emma didn't speak a word beyond the bare necessities needed to plan the trek and give directions, and Flynn wasn't inclined to break the silence.

 

Even back at the Mothership and back again in present day California, the silence had largely stayed, settling in like a suffocating blanket that left everyone on edge. Anthony's expression when he'd seen his old colleague again had been confusing -- the happiness was clear, the obvious relief Anthony felt that she was still alive and well, but there was something more complicated lurking in his eyes. It didn't disappear as he'd turned towards the controls to steer them home once more. Hearing Emma's recollection of Rittenhouse's plans for dominating history had only intensified that unreadable strangeness in his expression.

 

Until he spotted the bag of C4 next to Anthony's tools, Flynn had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Had been willing to believe that Anthony would come around, just like he had before, and understand that no matter the risks, the Mothership had to stay intact.

 

It had all happened in silence, broken only by the sound of two gunshots.

 

And Flynn could only feel numb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh NBC, part of me is glad to see Timeless back before the summer, but another part of me is really wishing you'd held off another month or two with your last-minute schedule changes. (So I could continue to slack off on writing this despite having everything outlined and most of the last chapter already written!)
> 
> Though I won't finish this fic before the start of season 2, I don't currently intend to incorporate any new material. Just fyi if you're wanting to avoid spoilers.


	13. Chapter 13

_“Lucy, I think we’ve figured out how to send you back safely. Did you take any trips out of the country in 2014? Let me know. Wyatt set up a new drop under the memorial bench outside the medical library on your campus.”_

_“Hey, we got your note about your trip to Paris. Rufus is narrowing down some dates. Do you know why Rittenhouse might be going to the Philippines in August of 1898? Thanks.”_

_“I think we might need some information from Flynn. The next time you see him, can you ask him to not be creepy and mysterious for once and tell you when you actually brought him the journal?”_

_“The older you brought Flynn the journal at his family’s funeral? Really? No wonder he was so attached to you. That’s gonna be a little tight with your timeline, but I think we can manage. Jiya’s calculating it now.”_

_“Lucy, we’re almost ready. Just hang on a little longer.”_

 

\--

Emma was an entirely different partner than Anthony had been. It was odd, this feeling Flynn got around her. Where Anthony had so often been cautious, wary of places he wanted to go and things he wanted to do, Emma seemed happy to jump right in wholeheartedly with Flynn's plans. She _joked_ – a much more congenial person than he'd ever expected when she'd stuck a shotgun in his face and warned him away from her cabin. Part of Flynn genuinely enjoyed talking to her and genuinely enjoyed hearing about her own trips in the past and her whole store of historical information.

 

But he couldn't trust her.

 

Flynn knew he couldn't really trust anyone. His men, the handful that were left, were here because they were paid to be, not because they believed in his cause. Emma was here because her feelings about Rittenhouse's plans were similar to his own, but even shared feelings couldn't be enough for true trust – Lucy alone was proof of that, never mind Anthony. But once he'd trusted Anthony enough to share some of the secrets of his past, and he hadn't been betrayed then. Flynn missed being able to unburden himself, to be vulnerable enough to plan something like the rescue of his half-brother with someone else. It would be nice if he could talk to Emma at least a little bit.

 

But even if he could talk to her, there was absolutely no way he could ever tell her about the journal.

 

Flynn still carried the journal around with him, a talisman constantly by his side, but sometimes it seemed like an eternity since the last time he’d really looked at it. It hadn't been – he’d used the journal's drawing of Emma's cabin to confirm he'd found the right place just days ago, after all – but he certainly hadn't been reading it the same way he once had. After the fiasco with Lucy and the Rittenhouse boy and Chicago, diving deep into her head again wasn't quite as comforting as it once had been, even if he still relied on its contents to direct some of his moves.

 

But catching Emma look inquiringly at the journal when he pulled it out to plan their next trip had thrown him. No one had bothered to notice the little book in so long, Flynn almost felt safe having it casually out in the open. It was comfortable, flipping through the pages and remembering the trust he’d once had for the words inside. Having Emma pointedly comment on the journal, demanding an explanation that he’d never really had to give before, was not so comfortable.

 

He almost regretted hearing the roar of Lindbergh’s plane because it meant putting the journal aside when Emma was still so curious about it.

 

He couldn’t trust her.

 

He couldn’t trust anyone.

-

 

In the end, his carefully laid plans with Charles Lindbergh had come to nothing. Yes, he’d successfully captured the man, cut off his rendezvous with Rittenhouse, and drawn Lucy farther in to understanding why she needed to join him against the organization. But at the same time, even though using Lucy’s conversation with the man to get information had been an inspired piece of improvisation he was almost proud of, the little bit he’d gotten from it was ultimately useless.

 

For all that Julian Charvet was a wealthy and powerful man with broad-reaching connections in both Europe and the US through his company, it was clear that Rittenhouse hadn’t fully trusted him. Even with all his power, he was still French and Rittenhouse was, as Flynn should’ve expected from the start, far more invested in its American members and the possibility of American domination. Charvet could meet Charles Lindbergh in France and connect him further with Rittenhouse, but he didn’t possess intelligence of any use to Flynn. No names he didn’t already have from the journal, no contacts he could exploit further, nothing. The bullet Flynn shot after their fruitless conversation was over felt like a waste too.

 

Getting back to the dreary catacombs to the news that their prisoners had gotten away wasn’t even a surprise – how could it be? It felt inevitable, the second he’d left Charvet’s home with nothing – and all that Flynn could summon up the energy to do was order everyone back to the Mothership and jump back to the present. Jump back to the present, back to yet another makeshift base tucked away in a dusty set of rooms in a disused warehouse, back to the inevitable pile of research for the one place or person or event he needed to find to tear down Rittenhouse for good. If, of course, such a thing was even possible any more.

 

It was becoming difficult to care.

 

Emma found him as he sat at a makeshift workstation in the base, the journal in front of him and the computer they'd managed to salvage from their last escape nearby. She was leaning against the doorframe, seeming casual, but her crossed arms and the lines around her tightened lips spoke of tension inside. She watched him for a few moments, clearly debating whether she wanted to break the silence in the room.

 

“I let them go,” she finally said, words snapping out. “Rufus was – I was the one who let them go.”

 

“I figured as much," Flynn said flatly. "Hard to resist the sad eyes of an old colleague, am I right?”

 

The tension almost crackled off Emma now, and he turned his gaze away from her and towards his hand resting on the journal. His head ached.

 

“It wasn't like—"

 

“It doesn't matter,” he cut in. “None of it matters right now.”

 

He could feel Emma's eyes boring a hole into him, but he couldn't look at her again. His head ached.

 

“You let Charles Lindbergh go with Lucy and Rufus, I couldn't get any information out of Julian Charvet that I didn't already have, it doesn't _matter_. If they lived, if they died, it doesn't matter right now because there's nothing I can do that will change anything, even with that ridiculous machine.”

 

Silence blanketed the room once more as Flynn stared steadily at the journal on the table, head pounding ever more painfully by the second. Emma pushed herself away from the doorframe and straightened up.

 

“I'm going to go get some sleep. I don't know what you think our next move should be, but I'm sure you have planning to do,” she said, turning to leave.

 

Flynn said nothing, his eyes squeezing shut against the headache.

 

_Nothing really matters._

And he couldn’t trust anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for hanging in there! If you've been reading for a while, you may have noticed that the final chapter count has gone up by one -- this isn't because I've suddenly realized that I need an extra chapter to wrap things up, it's because I miscounted way back when I originally put in the count. (Oops.)
> 
> As always, if you'd like to have a chat, you can find me on tumblr at jessenigma or on twitter at jessinbooks.


	14. Chapter 14

_”I think we’re getting close. Everything I could find on Rittenhouse, everything I heard, it’s all encoded in this journal.”_

_”There’s just one last thing. Take this.”_

_“What is this? A picture—“_

_“A picture of me and my girls. It’s…important to me. But you need to have it right now.”_

_“I can’t take this. It’s—Flynn, you need to keep this. I know you don’t have anything else.”_

_“You’ll give it back to me soon.”_

_“I’ll give it back? So this is…this is something I gave you? In the past?”_

_“It’s a sign. You’ll need it. If you want me to believe you when you give me the journal, you’ll need it.”_

_“If you’re sure…”_

_“I’m sure, Lucy. Take care of it for me.”_

\--

 

The pew was hard beneath him.

 

Flynn wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there. It had been morning when he’d crept out of their hiding place, determined to find... something. Emma hadn’t been around to pry any further, and he couldn’t remember what he told his man as he passed by on his way out. Maybe he’d said something about supplies, maybe he’d said something about research. Maybe he’d actually been honest and said he was looking for Lorena’s church. But even if he had been honest with anyone else, he certainly hadn’t been honest with himself. He didn't even know what it was he really wanted until he saw the stained glass shine in the morning light. This wasn't Lorena’s church, not the one where her service had been held, but it could’ve been any one of the innumerable Catholic churches in innumerable cities across innumerable countries she’d dragged him to over the years.

 

It wasn’t her church, but it smelled right. He wanted to cry.

 

Mass had never been something that had comforted him. His parents had not been especially devout to begin with, and in his childhood, they had rarely settled in one place long enough to bother finding a regular place to attend. Flynn's memories were largely of his father taking him to a handful of services at nearby churches around Christmas and Easter. Lorena, on the other hand, had somehow always found a mass no matter where they were. She gravitated to churches in each new place they lived like they were her second home, slipping right into the familiar rituals even when she didn't yet have a grasp on the language. She hadn't insisted on his joining her once a month until they'd moved to California with Iris (“ _she needs a church to grow up in and you need to be there to see her_ ”), but he'd accompanied her on plenty of occasions before then. Everything about this church reminded Flynn of his wife.

 

This church smelled like their wedding. He almost expected to turn his head and see Lorena there next to him, her eyes intent on the priest up front like always. Instead, all Flynn saw each time he looked was some new stranger -- an elderly woman slowly tottering towards a front pew, church cleaning staff making their way around the edge of the room, a happy couple clutching hands as they left the building.

 

The pew was hard beneath him, and he wasn't surprised when the priest finally made his way over.

 

The priest's words felt facile, the kind of words he'd give to a parishioner struggling with some mundane marital trouble or minor midlife crisis. How could his words be anything but facile? Even if God did exist – and even if he might've believed once, Flynn now very much had his doubts on that score – this man of the church could no sooner understand Flynn's actual dilemma than he could sprout wings and fly. To anyone who hadn't experienced it themselves, time travel could only ever be the stuff of stories, Flynn's very real questions about what he should do with this capability he held in his possession nothing but a philosophical exercise.

 

“ _I'm asking for absolution_.”

 

But what could absolution even mean when his hands were so soaked in blood through actions of his own choosing? When he knew that, no matter what happened, he'd never again be able to sit beside Lorena on a Sunday and watch her pray? He could ask for absolution all he wanted, but no priest could genuinely offer it to him. They couldn't understand what he'd done or what he could do.

 

Flynn got up then, muttering apologetic noises at the startled priest -- what he actually said, he didn't know, but it hardly mattered now. He needed to get out, to get away, to escape this place that reminded him of his family everywhere he looked. The guilt threatened to overwhelm him if he sat any longer, and he didn't need any help feeling guilty.

 

-

 

As he sat at his workstation back at the base, journal resting open as he pored over research material on the computer, Emma slipped inside the room again. She looked much like she had the night before, hip resting on the doorframe with arms crossed, lines still tight around her mouth.

 

“Did Julian Charvet really not give you anything new?” she asked, words surprisingly casual.

 

“He had information, but he didn't tell me anything I hadn't already pieced together. There's some kind of meeting held by Rittenhouse. If I could get more information on the next one, I think we could find a way in,” Flynn said, attention still intent on his research.

 

“So where are you thinking about going to find that information, then?”

 

Flynn looked up at her then, taken slightly aback at her continued questions. Her mouth tightened a fraction more, though her tone as she continued talking seemed just as casual as before.

 

“I assumed you'd want to jump soon, but I need time to work out the coordinates. I didn't like our landing last time, I rushed it too much.”

 

He looked at her for a moment longer before turning back to his research.

 

“Chicago in 1931, I think. I'll let you know shortly. Hopefully you won't need to work on too many more landings.”

 

As Emma slipped back out of the room, Flynn sighed, pressing his hand against the journal.

 

_What if you had the power to change the course of history?_

 

What if indeed.

 

Flynn had long since passed the point where he could be absolved of his sins. If he stopped now, it would all be for naught, right? And what could one more black mark on his soul do to him now?

 

One more jump. One more criminal to ingratiate himself with. One more bit of information to get. One more step towards ripping out Rittenhouse from its very roots.

 

It was only one more.


	15. Chapter 15

_”Are you ready? Is the journal ready?”_

_“Why? Is it time— “_

_“There isn’t any more time. Rittenhouse knows, Lucy.”_

_“Oh my god. Are you sure?”_

_“Wyatt picked up some chatter last trip. They know there’s a leak and they’ve narrowed it down to three people. You’re one of them, so either we go now or we don’t go at all and hope Rittenhouse doesn’t figure out the code when they investigate you. There aren’t exactly a whole lot of choices for us right now.”_

_“I—yes, I’m ready. Just grab me some funeral clothes and I’ll meet you at the spot.”_

_“Are you sure this will work?”_

_“Flynn told me everything he knows about getting the journal. He had to get it from me somehow, so all we can do now is hope this is close enough.”_

_“And hope we don’t destroy the universe in the process.”_

_“I’ll see you guys in a few minutes, Rufus. Be careful.”_

_“You too, Lucy.”_

\--

 

Flynn stood in the basement underneath the Rittenhouse summit and shattered into a thousand pieces.

 

It was a sign, maybe, of how rattled he was that he hadn't noticed Lucy and Wyatt approach him until suddenly he was faced with a gun. The basement was practically a dream for his plans: it was large, tidy, quiet... and completely devoid of any real security, as evidenced by his ease in getting inside with an armload of C4 and everything else he needed to blow up Rittenhouse for good. Flynn should have been able to hear anyone entering the place, and had it been any other day, he surely would have heard them. This had always been his job, sneaking into places he shouldn't be and keeping himself safe from detection.

 

But the weight of everything from that day pressing down on him was suffocating him and he couldn't think.

 

He hadn't dreamed of Lorena and Iris in what felt like years, and being pulled from the precious memory of promising his daughter that he'd always protect her from the monsters in the night had been distressing enough even before he'd talked to Emma. Before he'd talked to Emma and listened to her point out that Paris and Chicago were also just supposed to be "one more", before she'd wondered aloud if he was going to kill her the same way he'd killed Anthony.

 

He'd tried so hard to throw Lucy off too when he talked to her earlier, trying to unbalance her the way he always felt unbalanced these days.

 

_I just wanted you to know when I destroy Rittenhouse tonight – and I will – that also includes your grandfather, Ethan Cahill, which means... well, honestly, I'm not sure what's going to happen to you. But whatever it is, it's probably not good._

 

But no matter what he said, she'd remained infuriatingly calm, infuriatingly stable. Why couldn't she just understand what he needed to do? Why couldn't she leave well enough alone? Why couldn't she stay out of his head? There wasn't any room for doubt, there couldn't be any room for doubt, not ever.

 

_I think you're a broken person who misses the people that they love, just like me._

 

As he aimed his gun at the pair there in the dusty basement, he could feel heat behind his eyes and the prickling of tears threatening to fall. What little composure he'd had left, whatever facade he was still trying to keep up in front of Lucy and Wyatt as he stood there with trembling hand wrapped around the explosives detonator, it was all draining away from him. He'd kept on saying one more time, one more trip, one more jump, one more step... there was no room left for just one more.

 

Now was the time to decide what he was going to do and he _couldn't think_.

 

He'd begged the universe, he'd prayed to a god he no longer believed in to guide him to where he was supposed to be in order to get his family back, and he was so tired of doing all of this, so tired of not being able to face his own reflection in a mirror, but what choice could he possibly have?

 

It was Lucy's voice that guided him out of the darkness.

 

_What if he led you to me?_

_We have to stop trying to fix the past, and focus on the present._

 

It was Lucy's voice that helped him pull himself back together, that helped him think again.

 

It was Lucy's voice that he clung to as they laid out her plan to go to Ethan Cahill, to see if he would be willing to gather information for them and save it for them in 2017.

 

It was Lucy's voice that he'd so wanted to hear all this time – not angry, not scared, not hostile, but open... almost friendly. This was the Lucy he'd seen in the pages of the journal, the woman he'd pinned so many hopes on years before. Even if she still didn't trust him, working with her voluntarily against Rittenhouse was everything he could've ever dreamed it would be after everything that had happened.

 

He just had one more thing to do for her.

-

 

Flynn had been very cautious about their final meeting. Despite working with her, their partnership was obviously a fragile one – it couldn't be anything else with everything that had happened – and Lucy's affiliation with government agencies made him uneasy. He didn't think she would want to turn him in if she hadn't done so before, but he couldn't be certain even now. It was worth the risk, though. He needed the information Lucy had to offer, and it was time to pass the journal along to the person it really belonged to. He'd run his fingertips over the lines of writing covering every page for the last time; he didn't need it any more. This truly was going to be his one last trip, and there was nothing in the pages of the journal to guide him now.

 

Emma had been oddly absent from the base again, and so he had been able to slip out unnoticed to the meeting spot. He'd stayed undetected, as far as he knew, the entire way to the meeting. As he approached, Lucy looked like she was alone, assured him she was alone, and acted like she expected to be alone. Flynn hadn't been worried. Perhaps he should've been.

 

Her confused breath of a laugh as he told her where he'd gotten the journal from had been charming, and her puzzled smile as she asked him what he meant by her aging surprisingly well had been lovely, but the sudden shout of armed men swarming around him had driven any thoughts of happiness from his mind.

 

It was Lucy's voice that had guided him out of darkness before, but it was also Lucy's voice that drove him straight back in to anger.

 

He'd done everything he needed to do – _why?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting the last two chapters at the same time, so if you're reading this as it's posted, make sure you catch the last chapter as well!


	16. Chapter 16

_“Did you talk to him?”_

_“The journal, did you give it to him? Did he believe you?”_

_“This whole plan, is Flynn going to go along with it?”_

_“Did we completely fuck up the timeline?”_

_“It’s done, guys. Everything we can do is done. It’s all up to him now.”_

 

\--

 

He was surprised to learn that this prison had a visiting room after all.

 

Flynn had spent more than his fair share of time in prison cells—the perils of a life spent poking into places he wasn't supposed to be, collecting information he wasn't supposed to have, working for people he wasn't supposed to know. Usually he'd finagled his release fairly quickly (whether through legal means or through more…covert methods) but this wasn't his first time staring at the same cement block walls for what felt like weeks.

 

But these walls had been especially infuriating.

 

He'd _trusted_ her. He had trusted Lucy when she said she would help him. He had stopped and listened when she said they had another way to take out Rittenhouse. He'd let her walk him straight into a trap with the promise of one last bit of information about his family's killers. Maybe her information was legitimate, but now he'd never know—the flash drive was undoubtedly sitting in some distant evidence locker, awaiting his trial.

 

If he actually got a trial. Sitting alone in a cell for weeks, his only contact with the outside world coming with meal delivery, he'd been pretty sure that they'd just thrown him into a box somewhere and were planning to ignore him forever. He couldn’t even get a handle on the routine to work up a decent escape plan. But even though he was sitting at a table in shackles, pulled out of his cell by a pair of guards, he had a little more hope than before.

 

Hope that was quickly dashed at the sight of Lucy accompanied by the agent who had arrested him.

 

Flynn watched through narrowed eyes as Lucy stopped the other woman just inside the door ("no, I've got this"), and hesitantly walked closer to him. She slid into the seat across from him, wariness written all over her body language. The ever-present rage inside him welled up once more.

 

“What do you want now, Lucy? Have you come to gloat about your great Rittenhouse success again? I am—"

 

"Stop. Please, stop for a second. I need to talk to you. It's about the journal you gave me."

 

His expression must’ve confused her because Lucy stopped and looked at him cautiously. The journal? What good was the journal now? He’d given it back to her because he didn’t need it any more, didn’t see any way it could help him now. He’d gotten what he needed from it, and so it was only right to give it back to Lucy. That’s what the older Lucy had wanted him to do.

 

"We found something in the journal. It was information on Rittenhouse, coded into the entries. It’s the last pieces we needed to corroborate everything that Ethan gave us and bring down the head of the organization for good. There’s even some computer code to shut down the Mothership remotely and stop them from getting any further. This—you made this possible, Flynn. It's going to take a long time to dismantle everything they've done, but we couldn't have started if you hadn't given me the journal."

 

Lucy’s happiness with this news was palpable, but Flynn felt like something had struck him hard in his gut, a sickening twist. He—they—

 

"Mason said the situation was almost like...a mobius strip. The Lucy who gave you the journal collected all this information in her timeline and brought it back to you. When you jumped back in time, it was like...twisting the timeline. Giving me the journal brought everything back together and reconnected it. It's an impossible journal, just like my locket, but it's everything we needed."

 

Flynn’s gut tightened a little harder. Bringing her the journal was the key to everything? Why hadn’t the older Lucy just _told him that_ in the first place? Why give him a blueprint to destruction and not warn him away from trying to repeat it? Why let him turn himself into even more of a monster than he already was? Unless she just didn’t see any way around it, didn’t see any way she could pass along the information without him doing all the things he’d done.

 

“She had been undercover," Flynn said hoarsely. "She didn’t say, but there were so many signs. She was almost paranoid, unplugging everything in the room where we talked, and she seemed so desperate to pass the journal along. She must’ve gotten the rest of the information from Rittenhouse – _you_ must’ve–“

 

“Not me,” Lucy interrupted. “Someone I could’ve become. But not me. That’ll never be me, Flynn.”

 

She reached out then, grasping his hand where it was still cuffed to the table.

 

“I’m sorry, Flynn. I don’t think you would’ve chosen the path you did if there had been any other way. I wish there had been another way.”

 

Flynn welcomed the feel of her hand in his, a touch of kindness that he didn’t deserve from her. His throat was tightening now, on the verge of the first real tears he’d felt in a long time.

 

“What—what about my family? My girls?” he asked, trying to clear his throat against the tears. His eyes were downcast, fixed on the table in front of him.

 

"The men who ordered the murder of your family are in prison, Flynn. The men who carried it out are in prison too. It isn’t what you planned to do, I know, but you've avenged your family."

 

He couldn’t look back at Lucy’s face. The tone of her voice, the comfort she was trying to give him, was almost too much to bear, and silence fell in the room for a few moments as he tried to summon up the courage to ask the question he dreaded knowing the answer to.

 

“What about going back to save them?”

 

Flynn dared then to look up at Lucy. She had a guilty expression on her face as she released his hand.

 

"I...it's complicated. Rufus said that we've messed so much with time, it's dangerous for us to try and go back to change anything else. It’s not impossible, but we can’t keep doing what we were doing."

 

“You promised— “

 

"I promised a lot of things!” Lucy interrupted. “I promised you that we would save your family. I promised myself that I would get my sister back. My mother is in prison right now because of me. I have no family left. I want more than anything to have Amy back. But promising something doesn’t mean I can make it happen.”

 

She stopped her outburst then, slumping back in her chair and looking away from him. Her body language looked so much like the first Lucy then, the Lucy who would now never be – vulnerable and sad, but still determined.

 

“I…you could come with us. I’ve discussed it with the others. You would help us finish cleaning up Rittenhouse’s mess, you have the skills we need for that. Then maybe we could make one more trip. But I need you to stop and think very hard about this, Flynn. I don’t know what else might change from trying it. We might undo all the work we’ve done against Rittenhouse. History might change all over again and your family could still die. What would you do then?”

 

What would he do? He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror any more as it was. All he seemed to feel any more was anger. And he was so tired of running. Lucy had said that she thought some part of him just wanted her to stop him from his path of destruction. And now he was beginning to think she was right. Someone just needed to give him permission to stop.

 

The agent spoke up then from her position next to the door, arms still folded as she looked at him sternly.

 

“In light of the extenuating circumstances with Rittenhouse, we’re prepared to offer you immunity from prosecution for your part in stealing the Mothership. You’ll be a free man by tomorrow, Garcia Flynn. If you want to take Lucy’s offer to help with Rittenhouse after that, I’ll allow it. But no matter what else happens, I highly suggest you don’t even think about trying to pull another stunt like that again because I will have you back behind bars so fast your head will spin and you will _never_ see the light of day again. I trust that’s clear.”

 

And with that, their visit was over. The agent stepped out, speaking quietly to someone outside the room. Lucy stood and grasped his hand one last time, squeezing it gently. He felt something slide against the palm of his hand, and he looked up at her, startled. She'd passed along what looked like a folded note, rolled up so small it felt like it could be hidden practically anywhere, and his hand tightened around it.

 

"It's something you need to read," she said softly. "Agent Christopher doesn't know about it and I don’t want her to know about it, but it seemed too important to hold on to."

 

Lucy slipped out of the room then, making a quiet exit before he could say anything. Flynn kept a tight grip on the note as guards unlocked his shackles and escorted him back down the long, cold corridor to his cell. Neither guard noticed.

 

Alone once more in the familiar cement block confines, he unfolded the piece of paper and smoothed out the crinkles on the page. It looked like some kind of letter, and his heart skipped a beat as he caught sight of the familiar handwriting – Lucy’s writing, writing he more than knew by heart now – with a greeting addressed directly to him.

 

_Flynn -_

_As I write this, I'm hoping that no matter what timeline it is, my mother will always be slightly overbearing and my younger self will always know how I hide important secrets in my journals, because I have something I need to tell you after you get the journal back to me and finish what I needed you to do._

_I lied to you and I'm sorry. I haven't said the words yet, but I know I will. I know I'll tell you that I can help you get your family back because it's what I have to say to get you to go. Time travel is so hard, and I've lost people that I can't figure out how to get back. I'm not sure it's even possible to save Lorena and Iris, and I regret using your family that way. If I could think of another way, I would use it. But I couldn't do any of this without you._

_Another you handed me a journal filled with my handwriting and information about Rittenhouse coded inside the entries. I don't know where the journal came from, I don't know where the information came from, and I don't know how many times I've kept trying to bring the journal back to stop them. But I know that this has to be the last time I try. Something will break if I keep trying, and nobody will win._

_What I gave you isn't the same journal I received. I kept my own journal with more details of my experiences during the missions, and I put all the information back in and then some with your help. This whole plan is something we worked on together. You helped me collect information when I was working undercover with Rittenhouse. You told me what I need to tell you to convince you to try stealing the Mothership and bringing the journal to me again. You handed me the picture from your wallet yourself. You've been such a vital part of everything that's happened._

_There is goodness inside you, Garcia Flynn, and I hope I haven't taken it away entirely by doing this to you. I hope that a younger me will be able to help you save your family after all, and I understand if you can't forgive me. But know that I will always be grateful for everything you've done._

_\- L_

 

 

Flynn rested his head against the thin mattress of his bed, the letter dropped on the cell floor. He could feel the tears that had been welling up since the meeting with Lucy begin to spill down his face.

 

He would get his freedom. But still no family.

 

Should he try again? One last attempt to save his wife and daughter? Or was Lucy right? Would he risk everything he (they) had fought for and end up right back where he started?

 

One Lucy had seen goodness in him. Could he atone for everything he'd done instead, make himself truly worthy of the trust she'd placed in him those years before?

 

Was atonement even really possible for him?

 

-

Flynn jerked awake to the sound of his cell door opening. A guard was standing there, keys in hand, accompanied by Lucy.

 

"Flynn? Agent Christopher's arranged the paperwork. You're free to leave once you've been escorted out," she said. Her eyes were full of concern as she looked at him, saw the letter crumpled on the floor beside him.

 

"Are you – do I need to talk to Rufus about making a jump?" she asked, her voice tentative.

 

He smiled at her. It was a small smile, one that barely reached his eyes, but it was his first genuine smile in what felt like years.

 

"Thank you, Lucy, but I think we just need to finish what we started with Rittenhouse, don't you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we have reached the end! I fully expect that I will turn on the tv and find it completely jossed, but let's just call it an alternate ending to season one, shall we? (I have only myself to blame for not wrapping it up well before the start of season two, after all!)
> 
> I set out to challenge myself by writing this fic; I don't know that I did what I meant to do, but I certainly hope that it's been a fun ride for you all. Thank you to everyone who's left kudos or comments or just read any part of the story. I have very much appreciated every bit of attention paid to my little gen fic that turned out to be much bigger than I really thought it would be.
> 
> As always, if you'd like to talk more about Timeless, you can find me at jessenigma.tumblr.com or on twitter @jessinbooks


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